Local Heroes No 29: Lee Lai-shan: Wind in gold medallist's sails lifts Hong Kong's hopes of unity

Hong Kong - It takes a lot to bring tears to the eyes and lumps to the throats of the hard-headed people of Hong Kong. But 25-year-old Lee Lai-shan has done it by winning the colony's first Olympic medal in 44 years of competing at the Games. Moreover this is the last time Hong Kong will appear under the British flag.

She has done more than the win the bronze, which some optimists thought she might manage. Ms Lee came home with a gold for windsurfing. This was so much beyond the expectations of everyone, with the possible exception of her Dutch coach Rene Appel, that she is even now talked of as a person who can ease the bitter wrangling between Britain and China over the future of Hong Kong.

The rationale of this curious logic, as proposed by the South China Morning Post, was that Ms Lee has united political foes in a common cause of celebrating her triumph and that this unity of purpose might well be carried further.

Ms Lee, affectionately, and now universally, known as San San, is not averse to making a more general claim for her victory. "I didn't win this medal for myself," she said, "it is for all Hong Kong." And all of Hong Kong has wasted no time applauding her.

This is a place that loves winners and where bandwagons roll faster than anywhere else. Ms Lee hardly had time to make a tearful telephone call to her mother in Hong Kong before big companies were busy showering her with gifts.

She has secured a lifetime of free rides on ferries and the mass transit system. Cathay Pacific Airways will give her five years' worth of free travel, a newspaper group awarded her a HK$1m (about pounds 100,000) prize and sports goods manufacturers will give her any clothing she may care to wear. Tycoons offered their congratulations in ostentatious advertisements placed in local newspapers. And, of course, politicians have been scrambling to get aboard the San San bandwagon.

The great thing about Lee Lan-shan is that she is a real Hong Kong woman. Coming from a modest background, growing up in a family of 10 children, struggling against the odds to make herself an international competitor, given little official backing until there was a hint of success, her struggle to become a world league player is seen by many as a metaphor for Hong Kong itself.

Unlike most Hong Kong people Ms Lee comes from a rural background. She was born and raised on the island of Cheung Chau, one of the many small islands which make up the territory. The island's inhabitants are often regarded as rather quaint by the colony's urban population. Ms Lee's victory has the added advantage of raising their status. As a child San San was far from being the most diligent member of her family until her uncle introduced her to sailing. Ivy, one of her sisters, remembers San San as "Ms 70 per cent" because she never gave her full attention to any task - until she got the windsurfing bug.

Now expectations of San San have zoomed from lack of interest to the wildly unrealistic. Like many sports professionals, she is dedicated to her sport. The Hong Kong fame machine seems keen to turn her into a one-woman everything.