This year, he got the best result among all Macao secondary school students in the 1500M long-distance running of the 13th National Student Sports Games. He also competed as an international chess player in the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games held in Turkmenistan, and was nominated as an outstanding young athlete. He is Ip Seng Tou - a young athlete excellent in both static and dynamic sports. Under the pressure from three aspects: studies, long-distance running, and chess, this 17-year-old contestant never feels that it is hard to take care of them all but rather he requires himself to manage his time properly, being determined to be good at both running and chess.
Ip Seng Tou, who started engaging in long-distance running and international chess when he was in primary school, did not start his sports career well. When he was in junior high school, he was transferred to football and table tennis but his performance was merely average. He did not get any achievement in long-distance running in the school games until he became a Secondary 3 student. Since then, he officially turned into an athlete with great stamina again and was devoted to the 1500M and 5000M events. Ip Seng Tou thought that the most attractive thing about long -distance running is that his efforts could pay off, “Probably I lack talent in ball game events as I didn't make any breakthrough but long -distance running is an event where I could get something in return as long as I exert myself. That's why long-distance running is so attractive to me.”
In the National Student Sports Games, Ip Seng Tou got the result of 4 minutes 16 seconds and 47 milliseconds (4'16"47) in the 1500M event, which broke the record set by secondary students in Macao, but his objective was not limited to that, “My goal in the 1500M event is to break the Macao record (4'07"18), and make it within 16 minutes in the 5000M.”
Apart from the everyday training in long-distance running, Ip Seng Tou also arranges time for studying international chess. He competed in 19 countries or regions, and he was also the second runner-up in U16 in the Asian Dragons Invitational Chess Tournament. So far, his biggest objective is to compete in the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games representing Macao, “The Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games is the most representative among all the competitions I have ever joined. I hope that I can be qualified to compete two years later.”
