Hong Kong has revived today a sporting tradition dating back more than a century, that of swimming across Victoria Harbor, the port that separates Hong Kong Island from its mainland. However, the number of swimmers had been limited due to the pandemic.
With our correspondent in Hong Kong, Florence de Changy
With their competitor’s number marked with black felt on the skin, on the back, all equipped with hats, swimming goggles and each dragging their fluorescent orange float allowing them to be clearly identified in the choppy water and the waves of the port, they have summer 1,200 lucky people elected to be able to rally this year by swimming, Wan Chai, at the foot of the tall buildings of Hong Kong Island in Tsim Sha Tsui, on the opposite bank, a crossing of about one kilometer that we normally do it in one of the green and white ferries, in the shape of a calisson.
The swimmers had previously qualified with a 1,500-meter test. The last edition, in 2018, had nearly 4,000 participants but this year due to Covid-19, the authorities only admitted a third.
In fact, the risk of getting sick from an infection caught while swimming in the polluted waters of the port is incomparably higher than catching Covid-19 since Hong Kong has had virtually no cases of Covid-19 for more than six months.
The test, which already existed at the end of the 19th century, was also long interrupted for health reasons. ” Despite the risk of swallowing floating waste, of falling on a slick of dropped oil and the risk of catching an ear infection, I can’t wait to take the plunge », Affirmed this morning a swimmer in the South China Morning Post, Hong Kong’s leading English-language newspaper.