Tradition and rowing unite in China

Putting last year’s earthquake behind them, Chengdu in China’s Sichuan province recently hosted seven university rowing eights from around the world for the “Longhu Cup” International University Regatta as part of their 1300 year old dragon boat festival.

University crews from Denmark (Copenhagen), Italy (Milan), New Zealand (Otago), Australia (Sydney), United States (Trinity and Yale) and China’s Peking and Tsinghua Universities were invited and fully funded to attend. The visitors were treated like celebrities complete with gifts on arrival, a huge crowd of supporters and many autograph hunters.

As part of the traditional dragon boat festival which features the Xinjin Dragon Boat Race on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month the invited eights raced over 1000m in heats and finals.

Bjorn Saetterstrom was part of the Copenhagen team and he describes the event.

“Most teams arrived about one week early and during the week the hosts had prepared an excellent program for us. The mornings were for training and the afternoons were for sightseeing. We went to see beautiful Chinese attractions such as the Leshan Giant Buddha, which measures 71m and is sitting on the bend of the merging of three large rivers. It was built to protect the people who used to row across the rivers at that place, so it made a beautiful symbol with 70 rowers from all over the world visiting this 1200 year old site meant to protect rowers.

To kick off the festival the locals had set up a huge stage equipped with a giant screen and many spotlights. The show was televised on local and national Chinese television with the potential of reaching out to about 500 million people. The show started with a presentation of the university teams, where all teams had their eight and the team managers on stage with club flags and national flags. The show continued for three hours and famous Chinese opera singers were on stage along with Chinese dancers dressed in traditional costumes with beautifully painted masks.

Saturday was the first day of racing. In the first semi-final Milan met Otago, Sydney and Tsinghua, racing for the two spots in the A-final. In the second semi-final Yale, Trinity, Peking and Copenhagen clashed to compete for the last two A-final spots. A conservative guess on the amount of spectators was 5,000.

From the semi-finals, the qualifying teams were Otago in 2m48sec along with Sydney in 2m51sec. In the other semi-final Tsinghua won in 2m54sec, two seconds ahead of Trinity in 2m56sec.

The university crews weren't the only entertainment for the spectators. The festival also had the Chinese national waterskiing team performing a daring show. Thirty dragon boat teams competed to win a title along with other events. Sunday was for the finals. In the B-final Copenhagen and Tsinghua were in the inner lanes and Yale and Milan were in the outer lanes. All teams had a good fast start, but Tsinghua had the edge. Yale and Copenhagen followed closely. By 600m it was clear that Tsinghua would be difficult to catch up with, they won the B-final in 2m49sec in front of Copenhagen in 2m52sec. Yale finished third and Milan finished fourth.

In the A-final, Sydney and Otago headed out against Trinity and Peking. The teams were sent off from the start, and Sydney was leading a close race with a canvas down on Otago at 500m. But Otago didn’t give up easily and after 500m Otago had much more speed in the boat. The Kiwis took over the lead and won in 2m45s with a length down to the Aussies. Trinity took care of the third place.”

Trinity University rower Edward Slater described the final in his blog, “Every oarsman sat at this start line literally in the middle of China because of his love for rowing. That love managed to carry us to a new land which gave us so much over the past week.”

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