Paris Olympics bid ruled out for Hong Kong triathlon star Oscar Coggins, who is still grappling with health issues
- Coggins, who has not competed since last year’s Asian Games, is back in training and has been advised to set his sights on the 2025 National Games
- Head coach Andrew Wright has also delivered an update on Hilda Choi Yan-yin, who is set to return after a serious finger injury on eve of Asian Games
Head coach Andrew Wright has ruled triathlete Oscar Coggins out of a late bid for Paris 2024 qualification, but said the Tokyo Olympian was “moving in the right direction”, despite grappling with ongoing health issues.
Coggins has not competed since last year’s Asian Games, where he withdrew following the swimming leg of his race. Investigations into the underlying issues plaguing the 24-year-old are continuing, after he was struck down by both pneumonia and Covid-19 during the winter.
Coggins is currently managing around “20 hours of easy aerobic exercise” each week. An elite triathlete’s training block to prepare for a season typically features 30 hours of high-intensity activity each week.
Towards the end of last year, as Coggins took the first tentative steps towards a comeback, Wright floated the prospect of his athlete going for an Olympic spot, via next month’s pair of Asian championship events, where large numbers of qualification points are on offer.
But targets have been redrawn, with Wright encouraging Coggins, who finished 33rd in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, held in 2021, to focus on the 2025 National Games.
“He is taking a while to recover,” Wright said. “There is an underlying issue, but we do not know exactly what. It is to do with the immune system.
“Oscar was going well over winter, but got sick with pneumonia, and Covid. It does not make sense. He is super professional, he does not go out in crowds, and is always wearing a mask.
“To still get sick, when you are not putting intensity into training, is very strange. He is doing well when he trains, but has not had the consistency of the other guys. It would be impossible for him to do race-specific work at this [elite] level. From a psychological perspective, you need to build a large base before going into high-intensity training.”
Wright says Coggins is “super motivated”, five months after he was “not in a good place, physically or mentally” following his Asian Games disappointment, and could compete in a race for Hong Kong athletes to be held just after the World Cup event in the city on March 24.
“Motivation was the biggest problem, because when you are trying to do something as professionally as he does, and keep encountering problems you have no control over, it is so frustrating,” Wright said.
“Now, though, we are trying to rein him back, to not place any expectations on him, and keep everything very consistent and controlled.
“I think he will get there. There is no point rushing him, because he has nothing to prepare for, the National Games is his main focus, and I will give him all the time in the world to get ready.”
Wright also delivered a positive update on Hilda Choi Yan-yin, who had three surgeries to repair a finger badly damaged in a training accident on the eve of the Asian Games.
Choi has resumed training, but is “not quite fit enough” for the Hong Kong World Cup. Like Coggins, she is in line to compete in the secondary race, to make a judgment on her readiness for April’s Asian events.
Choi sustained her injury when the middle digit on her left hand became jammed as she bent down to try to fix parts on her bike.
Wright said the episode “knocked [Choi’s] confidence and motivation, and affected her fitness, because it took so long to recover”.
Restoring Choi to health has entailed an equal focus on the 30-year-old’s mental and physical condition.
“It is one of those things where, if you keep drawing attention to it, it is worse,” Wright said.
“We have a good team at the Hong Kong Sports Institute, including sports psychologists, and they [triathletes] use that support. They have techniques [to mentally manage situations], so they focus on other things.
“From my side, I get them working consistently, and reinforce doing the basics well. Then, over time, they begin to forget about other things.”
