Local teams competing in the first day of preliminaries for the Taipei International Dragon Boat Race Championships found it hard going yesterday to stay out of the losers bracket.
Many of the competition's 101 teams not only had to battle against the current but also were forced to contend with an extra 100m added to this year's race, to make it a 500m contest.
The other main change was the switch to a single-heat format, rather than the traditional practice of paddling two consecutive heats for a combined time.
"It's definitely a tougher race in the afternoon, though this morning it was fine," said Taipei City Board of Education women's team captain Li Huei (李蕙). "But even though we were really feeling it on this last race, it's still better than last year, because you only go once. Going back and paddling a second heat right away was harder."
Li's team looks poised to win the women's organizations division when it easily knocked the Taipei City Sanitation Department women's team to today's loser's bracket with a time of 4 minutes, 53.01 seconds.
Li said she expects her team to take the division easily and that its toughest competition in tomorrow afternoon's finals will be the Nankang District Administrative Office women's team which dominated the Administrative Districts Offices division yesterday.
In the men's divisions yesterday, the Fu Ren Catholic University Flying Dragons established themselves as the clear favorite in the Men's Open Division, and have a good shot at winning tomorrow's overall finals.
However, they risk getting worn out if they shuttle back and forth between the Taipei City races and the Taipei County race on the Pitan River, which begins today.
But the Fu Ren captain said that he was confident the team will prevail.
"We've been practicing for a year. We started right after the races ended last year.
"Today we were paddling exactly where we want to be -- we felt good and strong," Huang Tse-gang said (
The team beat its most-feared competitor -- the Taipei Physical Education College -- in the division yesterday by pulling ahead in the last 50m to grab the flag first with a time of 3:20.59, beating the college by more than two seconds.
The Physical Education College's team at the city's race is only its "B" team.
Its varsity team is racing in the Taipei County race and is the clear favorite there to take the Assembly Cup.
Teams that lost yesterday have a chance at redemption today if they can work their way up in their division's losers' bracket.
Plans by the race organizers to change the competition to a single-elimination format were nixed at the last minute so as to give teams a little more leeway as the single-heat format means there's no lane switch to avoid teams gaining an unfair advantage by racing in a lane with a faster current.
The International Divisions begin their races today, with the teams from Thailand, the US and the UK expected to be the front runners in the men's section while the US team from San Francisco should easily take the smaller women's section, in which only three teams have entered.
The Taipei City race continues today and tomorrow at the Tachia section of the Keelung River by the Tachia Riverside Park.
The opening ceremony will be held today at 9am.
The Taipei County race on the Pitan River in Hsintien begins today with the opening ceremony at 10am.
The two races -- this year held on the same weekend for the first time in many years -- have been criticized by some teams as being politically charged, to the detriment of the participants.
Taipei City has 101 teams and 3,000 participants, compared with the Taipei County race, which has 54 teams.
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