Chapter 21: Sport and Recreation
For the first time a Sports Festival was held in Hong Kong in 1958. The Indoor Festival was held in the Queen Elizabeth Youth Centre on 1st February and the Outdoor in the Government Stadium on the 23rd. No less than eleven controlling sports associations, the Army and a local school joined forces with the Amateur Sports Federation and Olympic Committee of Hong Kong to present a programme of athletics, badminton, basketball, cycling, fencing, hockey, table tennis, volleyball, weight- lifting, softball, miniature football, gymnastics and a mass physical training demonstration. The Festival had the two-fold purpose of bringing sports leaders together to work on a comprehensive programme and of popularizing certain of the lesser known sports.
In May Hong Kong sent by far its biggest and most varied sports contingent abroad when it entered for the Third Asian Games at Tokyo. 101 officials and competitors took part in athletics, basketball, football, lawn tennis, shooting, swimming, table tennis, volleyball and water polo and attended the many meetings and congresses of the various international sports bodies. Hong Kong won a silver medal in table tennis and a bronze medal in shooting, and was also placed in other events. The Chairman of the Amateur Sports Federation and Olympic Com- mittee of Hong Kong was re-elected to the Executive Committee of the Asian Games Federation.
In July Hong Kong again sent a team overseas to compete in the Sixth Empire Games at Cardiff. This time there were seventeen officials and competitors participating in lawn bowls, fencing and athletics.
The growing local interest in sport and physical recreation was reflected during the year by the great number of adults and children playing games wherever the opportunity offered. For this reason, public parks and playgrounds, as described later in this chapter, continued to be opened and improved. At the same time, organized sport in Hong Kong attracted an ever wider participation