Name Lee Shan | Role Olympic athlete | |
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Gold medals Sailing at the 1996 Summer Olympics - Women\'s Sailboard Similar Lee Wai Sze, Wong Kam po, Cheung Ka Long | ||
Lee lai shan coming
Lee Lai-Shan MBE BBS (Chinese: 李麗珊; Jyutping: lei5 lai6 saan1) (born in Cheung Chau, Hong Kong, 5 September 1970) is a former world champion and Olympic gold medal-winning professional windsurfer from Hong Kong. She was the only athlete to win an Olympic medal representing British Hong Kong, before the territory's transfer to China in 1997, and remains the only person to win an Olympic gold medal for Hong Kong.
Contents
- Lee lai shan coming
- lee lai shan sam wong i m finished with fins
- Sports career
- Participation record
- Honors
- Personal information
- References
lee lai shan sam wong i m finished with fins
Sports career
Lee Lai-Shan, popularly known as "San San", was born in Cheung Chau and started windsurfing aged 12. She began to take part in windsurfing competitions at the age of 17 and joined the Hong Kong team at 19. Over the years, Lee won many international competitions, including the first-ever Olympic gold medal for Hong Kong, in the women's mistral boardsailing class, at the 1996 Summer Olympics and the first champion in the Asian Games representing Hong Kong when it was a British colony.
Hong Kong had never been able to win any medals for as long as it had participated in the Olympic games since 1952 until Lee Lai-Shan's victory at Atlanta 1996. Notably, the 1996 Summer Olympics was the last international sporting event that Hong Kong participated in as a British colony, making Lee's medal the first and last medal that the Hong Kong team (not Hong Kong, China) won. It was at that time Lee famously declared to the media: "Hong Kong athletes are not rubbish!"
After the Games she became a student of sports management at Australia's University of Canberra in 1996. She was the first Hong Kong athlete to be awarded an honorary Doctorate in social sciences by The Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Lee became a recipient of the "Ten Outstanding Young Persons Award" and the Bronze Bauhinia Star Award in recognition of her outstanding achievements in the international sports scene. There is a monument resembling a windsurf board and mast erected in her honour near the beachfront at Cheung Chau.
In 2008, she was the first person to carry the Olympic torch in the torch relay leg in Hong Kong. She was also the final torchbearer in the 2008 Summer Olympics sailing opening ceremony at Qingdao International Marina.
Participation record
Honors
Personal information
She married longtime partner Wong Tak-Sum (黃德森) (known in English as Sam Wong), who has also represented Hong Kong internationally in windsurfing, and gave birth to a daughter, Haylie Wong (黃希皚), in August 2005, and to a second daughter in August 2007. This was one of the reasons for her to take a break from competition, though she has not ruled out competing altogether. In 2008, she was involved in the Summer Olympics again when she was one of the presenting team for ATV, in addition to commentating at its sailing event.
In 2006, she was featured in a Hang Seng Bank advertisement, in which she said the cost of raising a child in Hong Kong will be HK$4 million (US$510,000). It has caused a slight controversy in Hong Kong as most people do not think it will actually cost that much, and most think that Hang Seng Bank exaggerated the figures.