IDNEY CHU stumbled
across the news—at
once exhilarating and
guaranteed to drop him at the
center of a geopolitical firestorm—
one night in late December while
scrolling through Facebook. “All
of a sudden I see this post,” he
says. It was a press release from
the Hong Kong Skating Union,
officially announcing that the
22-year-old short-track speedskater
would represent his native land
at the Winter Olympics. Nobody
had contacted him, so first Chu
called an HKSU official to make
sure there was no mistake. “Then
I immediately called my parents,”
Chu says. “We just talked about how
it was the culmination of all the
hours and hours of hard work that I
put into my skating career.”
The journey began around age 10,
when Chu quit playing hockey with
his international school friends.
“I liked the speed,” he says, “but I
didn’t like getting concussions and
pushed [around] by people who are
so much bigger than me.” Taking
inspiration from a YouTube video ofU.S. Olympian Apolo Anton Ohno,
he signed up instead for an
introductory speedskating class
at one of the two ice rinks in
Hong Kong. “I fell in love with the
feeling of going fast,” Chu says.
“Like being in a race car, but instead
of wheels it’s your own two feet.”
With the class meeting only once
a week, though, he was forced to get
creative to satisfy his new passion,
frequenting a packaged-meat
cold-storage facility with his father,
Michael. There they would hose
down a small section of cement
f loor and let the water freeze before
Sidney laced up to hone his pushing
and gliding techniques.
He joined Hong Kong’s youth
speedskating program at 12,
busing five hours round-trip to
rigorous drill sessions on mainland
China. Next came two years of
high school in Changchun, a city
in northeast China, separated
from his family to gain what he
calls “my first experience of real
professional training.” A fractured
ankle, suffered in a fall during
practice, hampered Chu’s bid forS
CHINA’S POLICIES IN HONG KONG HAVE SPARKED
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BY ALEX PREWITTFEBRUARY 2022 13the 2018 Games. But he kept at it:
When he moved Stateside to
attend George Washington later
that year, he would set his alarm
to 3:30 a.m. to squeeze in predawn
workouts with the Potomac
Speedskating Club.
It all resulted in overwhelming
joy when Chu read that he had
been selected to race in the
500 meters in Beijing, where he
will become only Hong Kong’s
fifth Olympic speedskater ever. A
teammate had clinched the spot
in qualifying, but Hong Kong’s
Olympic committee ruled that
he did not meet its residency
requirement, leaving Chu to take
his place. “I wish I’d had some
champagne bottles to spray,” Chu
says. “Always wanted to do that.”
Once that feeling subsided,
though, Chu was hit with a thought
that kept him from falling asleep
for the rest of the night: “It was like,
Holy crap, I actually have to go.” Not
just because of the usual pressure
to make his home proud, especially
with Hong Kong coming off a record
six-medal haul last summer in
Tokyo. “I don’t want to screw up and
embarrass my butt on TV,” he says.
But also because Chu understands
that he will be taking center stage
in a uniquely tense global drama
when he glides to the starting line
inside Beijing’s glass-encrusted
speedskating center (aka the “Ice
Ribbon”) for his first heat on Feb. 11.
As Chu explains, “There’s a pressure
that you’re not just representing you
and your team. You’re representing
CO an entire geopolitical situation.”
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