At the finish area of the 2021 Standard Chartered Hong Kong Marathon, I watched two runners find each other after the race. The two, clearly friends, embraced warmly and looked like they were about to cry tears of joy. It was a touching moment as they hugged, congratulating each other on finishing the gruelling 42-kilometre trek through Hong Kong which started on Nathan Road in Tsim Sha Tsui and finished in Victoria Park.
Then a race volunteer rushed up to them, wearing a face shield, a mask, surgical gloves and carrying a megaphone, and barked at them to leave the area immediately, telling them they were not allowed to stay there and enjoy the special moment they were having. Talk about killing the mood.
The return of one of Hong Kong’s flagship sporting events – the city’s first large-scale outing in 18 months – was marred by controversy after it finally returned from a two-year hiatus. The 2020 edition was axed due to the pandemic and the 2021 race was pushed back from February to October.
One plus was the weather – by the time the sun came out and cranked up the heat, the elite racers had finished. By that time it was only the amateur runners left on the field, and you can guess what happened next.
There were a higher than normal number of injuries reported, 445, of which at least 20 needed to be hospitalised. Reports said some of those who required medical attention were suffering from high body temperature and sprains. In 2019 only 15 people went to the hospital from a pool of runners that was nearly three and a half times the size of Sunday’s field. That event took place in February, which has the lowest average temperatures on average.
There were also reports of amateur runners encountering a serious bottleneck at the Western Harbour Crossing, which is part of the full-, the half-marathon (21km) and the 10k races. One runner said she got claustrophobic in the crowded tunnel and had to stop running as participants found themselves shoulder to shoulder with each other. She said the organisers had open start times for a lot of amateur categories, which meant runners were bunched together at points during the race when the route became congested.
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On top of this were the accusations of censorship. The 2021 edition was not only the first since the pandemic started, but the first since the implementation of the national security law, which has seen some previously tolerated forms of expression effectively criminalised.
Multiple entrants complained on Sunday morning of being told they couldn’t race because of the clothing they wore, or were told to cover up tattoos with tape. One local media outlet reported that a women was barred from racing for wearing shorts with the words “Hong Kong” on them printed in a font similar to that used by the pro-democracy movement. One can only imagine what it would have been like to finally get to the starting line of a marathon – after not racing for 18 months – only to be told to go home because of what you decided to wear.
Organisers of the race cut short a tense press conference when members of the media grilled them on the subject as committee chairman William Ko Wai-lam parroted the same answer over and over to reporters: “the Standard Chartered Marathon is a sporting event, it should not have any political element”.
Another issue that developed at the finish line on Sunday morning was the ushering through of racers. Just after finishing a gruelling run, some – gasping for air and barely able to stand – were instructed to put on masks. Then they were told they couldn’t eat, had to keep moving, and were moved out of Victoria Park, where there was more than ample space, which created a massive spillover of people around the Victoria Park Swimming Pool. Crowds regularly had to be parted by ambulances trying to get to fallen racers, slowed down by bottlenecks created by poor planning.
It showed a lack of foresight by organisers, who should know people like to take photos, recover, stretch and congratulate one another after a race. Every one of these racers was fully vaccinated. Instead of letting them space out properly along the concrete football pitches, hundreds of metres long, they were shooed away into tightly packed areas with no oversight.
Hong Kong’s Covid-19 strategy has paralysed the city as the rest of the world moves on the from the pandemic, and the negative headlines continue as the government clings to its “zero Covid-19” strategy along with the mainland. Credit to the government for finally allowing an event like this to happen, but it seems like baby steps forward, followed by two steps backwards.
