UNFINISHED BUSINESS
Tatler Hong Kong|July 2024
Two-time Olympic swimmer Camille Cheng thought Tokyo 2020 would be her last Games, but competing in Paris was too big a draw for the French Chinese athlete
Salomé Grouard
UNFINISHED BUSINESS

This year will mark freestyle swimmer Camille Cheng’s third appearance at the Olympic Games for Hong Kong—a thrilling prospect for the seven-time Asian Games medallist, who’s looking at the Paris edition with a renewed perspective on her training and identity.

“I’ve been swimming for two decades, so I honestly thought that the 2020 Tokyo Olympics would be my last one,” Cheng tells Tatler. “But there was a little voice in my head that kept bugging me, and [telling] me to give it everything I’ve got left in Paris.”

Committing to the Paris Olympics was not a decision the 31-year-old took lightly. She knew what the physical, mental and emotional cost of training for three years would be. “It’s a 24/7 lifestyle,” Cheng says. “Swimming professionally implies a lot of sacrifices: the time I don’t spend training, I spend recovering from my training.”

When she’s preparing for competitions, Cheng has very little time for herself: she swims eight times a week, goes to the gym three times a week and practises Pilates twice a week—that’s before the physiotherapy, massages, stretching appointments and weeks-long highaltitude training. She adds to this busy schedule a regimented routine, a controlled diet and the inability to have a conventional social life; these, though, are concessions that she has been making since she was at secondary school.

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