張維

English

Dr Chang is a veteran sports medicine physician who has volunteered with Hong Kong's sports delegations for more than three decades and is known within the team as its chief doctor. At the 1986 Commonwealth Games he saw at first hand how many athletes travelled with untreated high blood pressure, joint disease or irregular heart rhythms, and the SF&OC president then invited him to provide medical support at the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Since then he has attended Olympic, Asian, East Asian and National Games almost without a break. Trained in the United States with leading orthopaedic and sports trauma specialists, he brought the concept of sports injury treatment back to Hong Kong. When he started, the medical team numbered three and the doctor doubled as masseur, counsellor and carer, even investigating an outbreak of vomiting and diarrhoea among athletes; by the 2023 Hangzhou Asian Games the team had grown to more than a dozen, the largest Hong Kong had sent, and he still travelled as chief medical officer. He argues that sports injury is a discipline in its own right rather than a matter of manipulation therapy, and that rehabilitation - not surgery alone - is what restores an athlete's ability. He has worked to train successors, to build a medical committee and to spread knowledge through seminars run by the Hong Kong Olympic Academy, and hopes to see a sports medicine centre on Hong Kong Island serving non-elite athletes.