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6th Wing Ding Opens the 2014 Christmas Season
(by Dr. Julian Tanner)
(Full gallery of Wing Ding photos can be seen here)
The 2014 Christmas season opened with the wonderful spectacle of 140 squash players, crazy outfits, and major charity fundraising of the 16th Wing Ding Charity Squash Tournament. The annual Tournament celebrates the life and memory of Yuen Kam-Wing, a member of the disabled community who worked at the Hong Kong Squash Centre who passed away in 1998. Many in the squash community have warm memories of Wing’s positive outlook on life and care for all those around despite a challenging physical disability. In his honour the Wing Ding squash tournament has gone from strength to strength and this year took the tournament to new superlatives.
As usual the squash ranged the spectrum from the entertaining to the inspirational. Fourteen teams entered each with ten players in the grueling running-teams competition - eight hours of non-stop squash with around 20,000 rallies - perhaps we need the Guinness Book of Records down next year? Costumes included the Black Swan of Swan Lake, Pink Panther (unfortunately the oversized heads proved impossible to see through), Captain America and Fred Flintstone.
The Kowloon Cricket Club and the late Island Squash Rackets Club took an early lead with notable high scores at their position by Paul Errington (ISRC) at number 9 and Henry Ng (Squash Family Ng) at number 8. But it wasn’t long until the big guns started appearing even pretty low down the orders – former HK champion Rebecca Chiu, who not so long ago was ranked no. 13 in the World, murdered the competition at number 5 for KCC. The former champions were pretty spread though – soon after HKCC offered up recent Hong Kong Champion Dick Lau at number 3, and former Hong Kong number one Faheem Khan dominated the number 2 spot, claiming the individual high score for the entire competition for the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club. But this being squash, it was youth which dominated finally with HKFC’s own Ho Fai Chiu winning the elite round at number 1. Ambidextrous Mick Holmes also appeared a second time at number 1 for LRC right-handed after taking 130 points at number 5 left-handed earlier in the afternoon! In the end, KCC came in to win the team competition eight hours later beating their nearest rivals HKFC by 1547 to 1499 points.
But what the Wing Ding tournament is really about is raising funds and awareness for important causes in the local community. The Wing Ding tournament is one of the largest donors to Operation Santa Claus (OSC), which directly supports charitable projects that effect positive change for disadvantaged people in Hong Kong and Mainland China. OSC beneficiaries fall under six themes of Children & Youth, Community, Elderly, Environmental, Medical, and Physical & Mental Disabilities. Major beneficiaries for OSC 2014 include Morning Tears Hong Kong who are strengthening psychological care for traumatized children, Sowers Action who have established an orphanage in Yunnan, and RainLily - Hong Kong’s only rape crisis centre, amongst many other charitable projects. The record HK$ 2,121,124.31 raised by the Wing Ding in 2013 million was heartwarming…in 2014, fundraising so far has raised circa HK$ 1.1 million so far and we are still hoping for more donations to come in. (and in total now nudging HK$ 10 million since 2003) will go a long way towards supporting those in need.
Many thanks are in order – to the HKFC for hosting the event at Asia’s (the World’s?) best squash facility, to Sudanna, Philo, Lewis, JiJi, Steve and Charlie for timekeeping, to Malcolm Kerr, John Lau, Ross Parker for adjudicating. Many thanks go to the many raffle ticket prize and auction donors without whom it would be impossible to raise so much for the beneficiaries. A big ‘thank you’ to Dave Murray for being the mastermind of the scoring, and of course to the tireless Tim Everest who inspires and leads this event from strength to strength, year after year.
Click on Pictures below to enlarge Results for Teams & Players
Wing Ding Results by Team
Wing Ding Players Scores