Dragon boat races go ‘national’ once again

One of the few survivors of the annual calendar of sports events in Macau, the International Dragon Boat Competition, will once again go ahead as scheduled and in a similar format as the previous iteration of the competition, leaving out all foreign teams, the Sports Bureau (ID) announced yesterday in a press conference.
This year, the organizers will keep the format trialed in 2020, which only invited the participation of local teams as well as a few teams specially invited from the mainland, the president of the ID, Pun Weng Kun, announced during a presentation.
“We expect the participation of high-level teams from the mainland in the Open Category and Women’s Category, strengthening the bonds of friendship and promoting the sports exchange between the mainland and Macau,” Pun said.
In keeping with last year’s format, the competition will be held over two days, June 13 and 14. The first day will include a Family Festival in which several games and activities for families and young children will be held at the venue by Nam Van Lake.
While the pandemic situation is more stable this year than it was during last year’s event, Pun noted that the competition will have to strictly follow the guidelines of the Health Bureau regarding pandemic prevention and control. All participants will have to present a negative result nucleic acid test (NAT) result before the competition. The president of the ID also added that the organizing committee will be in charge of organizing NAT tests for the participants, with the details to be confirmed at a later stage.
Questioned by the media on the sidelines of the event regarding the Covid-19 prevention and control measures which provoked some criticism from health authorities last year, Pun said, “Following the experience of last year, we are better prepared, and we will organize [the event] better this year.”
As with previous events, the team applications will be limited, with the president of the ID saying that he expects that the total number of participants involved this year will be around 2,700 if all the available slots in all the categories are filled.
The program for the first day of the event is dedicated to races of a shorter distance (200 meters). Teams will participate in these in four different categories, including the Open Category, Women’s Category, Public Entities, and University Students. On the second and final day of the event, longer distance races (500 meters) will be held for the categories of Open and Women’s.
According to the rules, team registrations are open to all local residents, as well as non-residents. However, for the local races, teams must include a minimum of 14 athletes that are Macau ID (BIR) holders for the Standard Dragon Boat Races and a minimum of eight for the Small Dragon Boat Races.