Olympic foil champion Edgar Cheung Ka-long has framed this summer's World Fencing Championships on home Hong Kong soil as a career-defining honour, with the city hosting its first global fencing event and the reigning Olympic gold medallist a central figure in the local squad.
"Fencing in my hometown is an honour. I'm very excited about it. I'll just try my best every time," Cheung said at a championships preview event in early May. The Tokyo 2020 gold medallist, who has been the face of Hong Kong fencing for the better part of a decade, will lead a men's foil challenge that also includes world No. 1 Ryan Choi Chun-yin and a deep team-event squad.
Cheung used his pre-tournament remarks to reflect on the wider arc of Hong Kong's sporting development, framing the championships as evidence of how far the city's sporting culture had come. "Before, maybe we didn't have enough confidence to show Hong Kong people that we were good in sport," he said. "But now I think our team and athletes across different sports have shown everyone that we are capable of doing anything."
That shift has had a measurable effect on participation. Club-level fencing in Hong Kong has grown sharply since Cheung's Olympic gold, with the local federation reporting waiting lists at most major training venues. Choi has been a vocal contributor to that growth, regularly speaking about the responsibility he and Cheung feel to a younger generation of fencers now coming through.
The championships venue — a purpose-equipped fencing hall inside one of Hong Kong's larger sporting complexes — has been used for several FIE-sanctioned warm-up events through 2025 and 2026. The local federation has built up a roster of trained officials and volunteers, and the venue's piste configuration has been signed off by the FIE's competition team. The event will run individual and team competition across all three weapons.
Cheung's recent form has been steady rather than spectacular. The Olympic champion has carried a small training-load injury through parts of the European leg, but his coaching staff has prioritised peaking him for the home championships rather than chasing every World Cup result through the season. The bet is that the right peak in the right room produces the result.
His head-to-head with the world's other top foilists will dictate the final standings. Italy's Filippo Macchi, who won gold at the Istanbul Foil World Cup earlier this month, is widely seen as the man to beat in men's foil, and a Cheung-Macchi semi-final or final would carry the kind of weight that the city's fencing community has waited a long time to see.
For Cheung, the gold medal is one thing; the home moment is another. The Olympic champion's measured framing — "I'll just try my best every time" — has been characteristic of a fencer whose competitive demeanour has never wavered with the size of the stage. The first World Championships ever held in Hong Kong are likely to provide the biggest stage of his career outside the Olympic final, and the city's fencing community will be watching.
The World Fencing Championships in Hong Kong will run later this summer. Cheung, alongside Choi and the rest of the Hong Kong men's foil squad, is expected to be one of the principal medal contenders.
