Talented skateboarder barred from Olympics due to club membership issues

A talented 15-year-old skateboarder has been denied the opportunity to represent Hong Kong in the Olympics due to issues with his sports association memberships.  

This comes after a nine-year-old swimmer was also denied participation in the year-end championship due to membership issues with the sports association.  

Young skateboarder Dennis Gu Jiahuan has achieved outstanding results in worldwide competitions over the past two years, including the championship at the X Games China (youth category) last year, setting a historical record in the city.  

Gu is currently training with Chinese skateboarding Olympic athletes in Nanjing. However, he cannot compete for Hong Kong in Paris because he is not a member of the Hong Kong China Federation of Roller Sports and Skateboarding, which is recognized by the Sports Federation and Olympic Committee of Hong Kong, China (SF&OC).  

China Hong Kong Skateboarding Federation, the club Gu belongs to, complained of a lack of transparent selection processes by the Federation of Roller Sports and Skateboarding on the Hong Kong team.  

The club noted that even with the Chinese authority recognizing Gu as a Division 1 qualified athlete, the Hong Kong skateboarding governing body does not acknowledge Gu's athlete status.  

"We have a skateboarder who could have represented Hong Kong at the Olympics, but he couldn't go because of his scores or performance, but because of membership issues," the low-tier club added.  

The skateboarding governing body has yet to respond to media inquiries, while SF&OC said there is room for improvement in the selection of athletes by the sports associations.  

Kenneth Fok Kai-kong, the vice president of SF&OC, said he learned about the incident and emphasized that all sports associations should have open and fair athlete selection processes.  

Fok added that there will be new guidelines for its 80 member associations by the end of September. The focus will be on improving the transparency of the selection process, making public the finance states of the federations, and implementing a complaint mechanism.