[Chairperson’s New Year Message💬]
Dear friends,
Happy New Year!
It is my greatest honor to address you in the capacity of Chairman of Hong Kong Skating Union today.
I want to first thank our chairman Ms. Yip for her years of dedication to the sport of ice skating and HKSU. Through her reign of twenty years, she has brought about a tremendous rise in the overall skating level in Hong Kong, and achieved many outstanding and groundbreaking results, including 5 times participation in the winter Olympics in Short Track Speed Skating and two 14th place finish at World Championships in Figure Skating. Ms. Yip has always taken on her roles and responsibilities at HKSU with a special type of empathy that could have only been given by a skater’s mom. She wanted to give opportunities to kids who loved the sport, to have more possibilities to lessen the burden on their families.
When I first came to HKSU with Ms. Yip twenty years ago, one of the first things Ms. Yip wanted to do was to host competitions, local competitions to form a selection system for international events and to spike up local interest, and regional competitions so that our skaters can see how much they have come forth and how they could to get to where they want to be. Together, we found a version of the result calculation software plug-in on one of the bookcases left over from the predecessors, and two months later, we hosted our first competition.
Much gone by in the past twenty years. Twenty years ago, I was a figure skater, I loved skating and I dreamed about going to the Olympics. Now, I still love skating more than ever, and I promise, while my dreams of going to the Olympics as a skater will never come true, I will make it my mission to make the Olympic dreams of our skaters come true. I will take on my new role and responsibilities even more passionately and ferociously.
Our skating community and our athletes have faced tremendous challenges due to Covid-19 in the past three years. Skating rinks closed due to anti-pandemic regulations, and skaters have found themselves without training for months at times, and competing at events, which is very crucial in their sporting development has been almost impossible. But, despite the hardships, our skaters prevailed. The bigger the challenges we face, the stronger we will be.
Finally, please allow giving my sincere appreciation to the International Skating Union, Asian Skating Union, SF&OC, our fellow member associations in the ISU, and our members for their continued support of HKSU.
May 2023 marks a brand-new journey to a new horizon.
Chairperson
Melody, Yip Tan Tan
Melody, Yip Tan Tan