Sports feature：One rope, a thousand variations

[2016.11.02] 發表

【明報專訊】Hong Kong won 79 medals in the World Rope Skipping Championships in Sweden between July and August this year. The younger athletes, who are equally talented, can't wait to show they are capable of!

Rope skipping is a sport in which a person swings a rope and jumps over it. Nathan Leung Ho-chit (梁浩哲), Shereen Chan Sum-yu (陳心予) and Max Tam Ho-hin (譚浩軒) are rope skipping athletes who attend Po Leung Kuk Lam Man Chan English Primary School (保良局林文燦英文小學). They participated in and won several medals at the Arnold Classic Asia — Hong Kong Open Jump Rope Championship 2016 (阿諾國際體育節——香港國際跳繩公開賽) last August. Let's find out what they have said.

◆"There are many moves and skills in rope skipping. Many of them have to be done at high speeds!" Nathan started doing rope skipping when he was in primary two with his mother's encouragement. He said there were over a hundred moves and he could do more than seventy of them. His favourite move is triple under, which requires one to swing the rope three times in one jump. "I like doing it most because I can do it, but quadruple under is really difficult."

◆Shereen discovered she was interested in rope skipping when she played the sport with her cousin three years ago in the Lunar New Year holiday. "In May this year, I participated in Rope Skipping Delight Hong Kong 2016 (香港花式跳繩大匯演), but it was also the time when I had to revise for my exams," Shereen recalled. "Fortunately, I won the championship and I did better in those exams than I ever had. That gave me a lot of confidence. Mum even took me to Japan as a reward!"

◆When he was in primary one, a teacher selected Max during a physical education class to join the school skipping team. He has had lots of chances to do rope skipping as a team member in competitions like Hong Kong Elite Rope Skipping Championships 2016 (全港跳繩精英賽). Team members must cooperate with one another. "We sometimes argue, but I have learnt to think from others' perspectives and help one another." When the rope's speed is so high that Max or his teammates can't catch up, the rope holders will slow down and increase its speed little by little.

■Key words

triple under 三重跳

quadruple under 四重跳

■ English highway﹕ little by little

It is an idiom that means slowly and gradually.

e.g. Eason's English is improving little by little.

■ Glossary

encouragement (n) 鼓勵

challenging (adj) 有挑戰性的

revise (v) 溫習

recall (v) 回想起

reward (n) 獎勵