Swimmer Camille Cheng on representing Hong Kong for the third time at the Olympics and on the challenges of competing as a mixed athlete

Allowing space for such reflection has always been a priority for the athlete, who holds a psychology degree from the University of California Berkley, and who co-founded Hong Kong-based youth mental health charity Mind The Waves with fellow swimmers Stephanie Au and Jamie Yeung.

She says it also helps that swimming naturally allows time for thinking: unlike team sports such as football or volleyball, she is herself in the pool, often with only the sound of the splashing water for company.

This room for self-analysis is paying off. “It took me a while to understand that my value and identity were linked to what I learnt from competing rather than my race times,” she says. “As an athlete, not tying my identity to my performances was quite challenging, as we’re all mostly perceived through the numbers of medals we collect or the times we hit.”

With a new coach, new mentality and new daily routines, Cheng learnt how to train smarter and not harder—especially important, since injuries are more common now than when she was 21. These changes, she hopes, will have a positive effect on her performance at the Paris Olympics, which represents a unique occasion to showcase another facet of her identity: being a mixed-race athlete. “These Olympics are special to me because I’m half French, which means that I’ll be able to perform for Hong Kong but also in front of a part of my family,” she says.

Being proud of her Frenchness while representing Hong Kong can be tricky to navigate. With a French mother, a Chinese father and an experience of education in Hong Kong, Beijing and the United States, she says that she feels she constantly has to prove her loyalty to her hometown. “I don’t speak Cantonese well. I look ethnically ambiguous. People always wonder why I represent Hong Kong—not necessarily in an accusatory way but only because it looks like I have so many options.”

As increasing numbers of young mixed female athletes, such as Eileen Gu, Naomi Osaka and Emma Raducanu, have been in the spotlight in recent years, she feels this conversation is of increasing importance in a city as international as Hong Kong. “Early on in my career, proving my loyalty to Hong Kong was always on my mind,” she says.

But as she heads into her third Olympics, Cheng feels confident in knowing what Hong Kong means to her. “Today, I’m simply happy and extremely proud of representing this city I grew up in. For all the other mixed athletes out there in Hong Kong, I just want to tell them that I’m cheering for them.”

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