Hong Kong could host Special Olympics, its CEO says, given National Games venues

While Italy and Switzerland will host the Special Olympics World Winter Games in 2025 and 2029 respectively, no country has yet been awarded the summer version for 2027, although both Chile and Australia have suggested they may bid to do so.

“It [Hong Kong] has the facilities, there’s going to be a National Games in the Greater Bay Area in 2025 and I think that will be a great lead-in event,” she said.

The Greater Bay Area is a Beijing government development plan covering Hong Kong, Macau and nine Guangdong cities.

Davis, who has been CEO since 2016, was in Hong Kong last week to attend a charity gala dinner at The Regent hotel in Kowloon, where money was raised for her organisation’s Unified Sports programme.

She said there was plenty of support for the Special Olympics in the city.

“Hong Kong has very committed and engaged people that want to help, they are motivated, interested and open to learning more [about intellectual disability],” the 69-year-old said.

“They want to be more inclusive and we’ve got to show them the way … so events like this gala also raise a great deal of awareness and understanding.”

Ultimately, Davis hopes to not only encourage those with challenges to take part in the Special Olympics, but to raise awareness among the next generation of coaches, volunteers and administrators.

“Our Unified Schools programme is one way we can teach young people to be more accepting and more inclusive,” she said. “These young people are going to be the future.

“They’re going to take up positions in government, high-level positions in the corporate community, they’re going to be professors, teachers and healthcare workers.

“So the more understanding they have, the more awareness they have of Special Olympics, the easier it will be for everybody to do their job, but more than that, for the athletes to be accepted.”

For Davis, acceptance could also come from expanding the programme to see young people of all abilities play sport together.

“And through interaction with our athletes, young people without intellectual disability learn to understand people who are different may look different to them but who really when they get to know them aren’t that different,” Davis said.

But there are more immediate obstacles for Davis and others to overcome, not least in the loss of contact with 43 per cent of the world’s six million athletes, family members, supporters and others because of the coronavirus pandemic.

“We have great difficulty getting those lost athletes back due to Covid-19 because we don’t have that central database telling where they are,” Davis said, adding she was determined that would not happen again.

A digitised database is being worked on, so that “if something happens out of our control again”, information would not be lost.