1,200 Swimmers Take Part in Hong Kong's New World Harbour Race

(13 Dec 2021)  The annual New World Harbour Race made its comeback at Victoria Harbour on Sunday, with 1,200 swimmers taking to the water.

To mark the official opening of the racing groups at 08:15, the gun-firing ceremony was officiated by The Honourable Mrs. Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, the Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region; Mr. Wong Kam-Sing, Secretary for the Environment; Mr. Adrian Cheng Chi-Kong, Chief Executive Officer of New World Development; Mr. Sitt Nam-Hoi and Ms. Jenny Chiu, Executive Directors of New World Development; Mr. Timothy Fok Tsun-ting, President of the Sports Federation & Olympic Committee of Hong Kong, China; and Mr. Ronnie Wong, President of the Hong Kong China Swimming Association.

The three event ambassadors of New World Harbour Race - So Wa-wai, the six-time Paralympic gold medalist nicknamed “Magic Kid” (track and field); Hayley Chan, Champion in World Cup series (wind surfing); and Lai Chi-wai, Asia's Rock-Climbing King (rock climbing) - showed up to cheer on the participating swimmers.

1,200 swimmers took part in the annual New World Harbour Race in Hong Kong on Sunday

After a morning of intense competition, the trophies for the Racing Group Individual Men & Women went to Sin Chin-ting Keith and Nip Tsz-yin, who clocked 13’44 and 14’56 respectively.

Cheung Sze-yu the young swimmer aged 16 was declared the champion in the New World Springboard Championship, achieving a time of 22’22.

New World Harbour Race has welcomed many young swimmers from the New World Springboard programme in recent years. Launched in 2012, New World Springboard offers sports programme and training to under-resourced children for free – such as swimming, basketball and rope skipping etc. – to empower them to unleash full potential and reach beyond.

Staying true to its spirit of “Together We Make Waves” and mission to encourage swimmers to embrace challenges, the New World Harbour Race invited five “Hong Kong Sports Legends” as event ambassadors and mentors for the New World Springboard participants.

The five ambassador-mentors included Siobhan Haughey, double Tokyo Olympic silver medal-winner (swimming); So Wa-wai (track and field); Ng On-yee, Women's World Champion (snooker); Hayley Chan (wind surfing; and Lai Chi-wai (rock climbing), who shared their road to champion stories with young swimmers, encouraging them to stay undaunted and to create their own waves of success in sports and in life.

New World Harbour Race also marked its 10th anniversary with a collaboration with CASETiFY, which saw the launch of five limited edition phone cases. Designed with the theme of waves, the cases are now available via the CASETiFY website, with a portion of the sales going to WWF Hong Kong to support their marine conservation and education projects.