Penn Alums send dragon boat to gold in H.K.

Philadelphia businessmen "shocked the world" by beating a few dozen Asian teams at their own sport last June. Now they're teaching local women to row. All boats and oars were not created equal. A crew boat sits eight rowers at most. They sit single file and row a steady, smooth 35 times-a-minute. They are usually painted in nondescript shades of blue and brown. Dragon boats, on the other hand, are a fanciful-looking species -- with snarling dragon "heads" at the bow and vibrant shades of read and gold adorning their bellies -- they require 20 rowers paddling in sync at speeds 85-100 times-a minute. The demand is why Steve Hartman, a University alumnus and avid dragonboater, called it "the ultimate team sport." Yet, if you polled Philadelphia residents who had even heard of the sport, you'd likely get a very small number. That's not true in the rowing community, and not so for East Asia, where dragon boating is an immensely popular tradition that dates back 2,000 years. When the Philadelphia Dragon Boat team, representing the United States this past June at the International Dragon Boat races in Hong Kong, took the gold medal in the 500-meter race, the Philadelphia Inquirer allotted two lines to the news. With such little recognition, and only two big races to look forward to every year, then what kept the 20 Philadelphia paddlers -- all of them with demanding full-time workloads -- meeting on the Schuylkill five times a week since March 1, doing hundreds of sit-ups a night, and working out year-long? International competition. "There is nothing like sitting at the starting line, and on your left you've got Indonesia, and on your right you've got Japan," Hartman said. Philadelphia's team faces pretty impressive competition last June 14 in Hong Kong. Both Australia and Germany boast teams with Olympic rowers, and Indonesia's team -- which is professional -- practices twice a day. In China, where the sport originated and crowds of "at least 250,000" gathered in 1995 for the World Championships, the teams are also exceedingly competitive. China also has the gold-medalist women's dragon boat team. Philadelphia has recently undertaken the task of getting a women's team together themselves. The 75 women who were attracted to the team by posted flyers range in age from 18-42 (the men are mostly in their 30s-40s). Though it may be a while before the Philadelphia women represent the United States in international competition, they will be helping the men return to China in the meantime. The women each pay to receive lessons from the men, and until the men's team gets corporate sponsorship, the income is a large source of funding for the Philadelphia Men's Dragon Boat team.