Mike Dojc

SPORTS

Blazing Paddles-Everything You Wanted to Know About Dragon Boat Racing but were Afraid to Ask

4/26/2006

A dragon boat is a monster-canoe that seats 22, 20-paddlers, a coxswain to steer the regal beast on a straight course, and a drummer to bark orders and pound the pace. The races are 500 metres of paddle-powered fury, it’s no wonder this is the fastest growing sport on water. Forget the Kentucky Derby—to this sport’s millions of fans no two-minutes of racing action compares to the oar war of a dragon boat heat. We get right down to the belly of this 2200 year-old Ancient Chinese pastime with Smoke on the Water co-captain Graeme Turner.

Is a dragon boat just a giant rowboat with a fiercer attitude?

It’s more like a war canoe, but it’s longer and smaller on the sides.

Do you ever feel like you’re on that slave ship in Ben-Hur?

Sometimes I do.

What’s your dragon boating philosophy?

At a race I always say PMA-Positive Mental Attitude here, we’re going to win!

How physically exerting is dragon boat racing, how do you arms feel after the first time you try it?

It’s a good workout—it’s exhausting. The first time you try it you’ll find that your arms hurt if you don’t understand the technique, because it’s completely different than canoeing. Canoeing is all arms whereas in dragon boating you are pretty much straight-armed and using your stomach and back muscles all the time. Your core muscles are what really power you through your stroke.

Describe the thrill of neck and neck dragons on the run?

We lost by one one-hundredth of a second just last month in Milton. This is just a blink of an eye right at the end. The race was won by one final thrust. When you know there is another boat beside you, your adrenaline is driving you to pull as much water as you can with your paddle. You want to win, you want to get across that finish line before they do, and so you reach for every ounce of energy left at your disposal.

When you lose by such a slim margin can you feel it right away?

No, we were standing by the podium waiting for the medals to be announced and we still didn’t know. The anticipation of winning was really high and then the disappointment when we found out we lost by one one-hundreths of a second [was huge], it was very depressing.

What’s your race strategy?

Our race strategy is to take five deep powerful strokes, then go into ten faster strokes to bring the boat up to its maximum speed. From here our race strategy is about consistent paddling what we call long deep strokes. In the last 100 metres, the finish, we try to summon as much power as we can. We don’t go out of control because if you do you’ll actually slow down because you won’t get enough water on your paddle, that’s known as spinning your wheels.

Is synchronized rowing key in dragon boating?

Yes, because if you’re not synchronized you start to caterpillar. When you see a caterpillar or centipede walk, its back legs aren’t in time with its middle legs and so you slow your boat down when things get out of synch.

Is Dragon Boating a very social sport?

It’s a strong social sport that brings out a lot of different people and you never know what’s going happen. Around six people on our team have gotten together. I met my girlfriend dragon boating and we’re living together now.

Do you guys ever capsize?

It happens many times. During one race we had a rogue wave hit our boat, (that’s what we blame it on), and it lifted our cox’s paddle right out of the water and since our lefts are stronger than our rights the boat pulled left and we bumped into another boat and it capsized. Sometimes everybody on a boat gets really excited and then the next thing you know it capsizes

So what does Lake Ontario taste like?

Lake Ontario tastes like the worst cough medicine you could possibly take.

An words of wisdom for first-time dragon boaters?

Work through the pain, there are goals at the end. Pool practices discourage a lot of people because you sit at the pool edge and practice your timing and go absolutely nowhere. It’s not until you actually sit in a boat that you realize this is a great sport, the excitement of racing is of such a high intensity.

Do you celebrate no matter what after a race?

We celebrate win or lose, we get together we’ll stick around the event and watch other races, usually there is always a beer tent to go to either to cheer your medal or drown your sorrows.

It seems Canadians are preternaturally inclined toward rowing, are Canucks also natural born dragon boaters?

I think so. I think the sport has really taken off. Toronto Island is the second largest dragon boat festival in the world next to Hong Kong, it draws at least 60 to 70 thousand people a day over to the island during the festival. Canadians take to it, everybody is really excited about dragon boating and it keeps growing, we’re getting more teams each year.

An abbreviated version of this story first ran in the Toronto Sun

Copyright © Mike Dojc, 2006