Vivian Kong Wins the Cali Grand Prix and Returns to World No. 1

Vegan fencer Vivian Kong is back on top of the world. The Hong Kong épée star won the Cali Grand Prix in Colombia on Sunday, beating France's Marie-Florence Candassamy 15-8 in the final, and the victory returns her to world No. 1 in women's épée.

Kong's toughest bout came in the semi-final, where she edged Italy's two-time world champion Rossella Fiamingo 9-8, according to the International Fencing Federation. Candassamy had knocked out Brazil's world champion Nathalie Moellhausen 15-13 on her side of the draw, but Kong controlled the final from start to finish.

The gold lifts her above South Korea's Song Se-ra in the rankings, Asia News Network reports. Kong first reached No. 1 in 2019, and Hong Kong's sports secretary Kevin Yeung said she had "wrote a glorious page in Hong Kong's fencing history" by doing it again. With Paris 2024 qualification under way, the timing could hardly be better.

Kong had thought about going vegan for years, but it was a torn anterior cruciate ligament in 2017 that made her do it. She was pescatarian at the time and spent her rehab looking up the best foods for healing. "After the injury, I wanted to change and be a new person," she told Great Vegan Athletes. "I wanted to recover faster." The research kept pointing to plants, so she dropped all animal products, and a year after knee surgery she became the first Hong Kong woman to win gold at the Asian Championships, as the South China Morning Post reported at the time.

I have all the protein I need. I am recovering a lot faster, I get muscle pain but it goes away really quickly. I have become so much stronger after turning vegan.

We've followed Kong's rise since that Asian Championship gold in 2018. She went on to win the Havana World Cup and a world bronze and took another world bronze in Cairo last summer. Earlier this year plant-based boxer Lawrence Okolie kept his WBO title in Manchester.

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