Sports | Fire Service dominate Dragon Boat races weekend

The 2016 Macau International Dragon Boat events has started this weekend, with the first two days of event dedicated mostly to the local teams, public and private institutions and universities.
The Macau Fire Service team was the big winner of the weekend taking the title for all the categories they were listed in (three), including two victories in the Open Category.
The Fire Department team started showing dominance right from the first day, during the shorter-distance races dedicated to small boats (200m), taking victories in both the Macau Public Entities and the Open Category Grand Finals, showing great dominance.
“The key to our success is in the psychological adjustment of our team members. Today, the team members were in a good state and performed very well,” one of the team members told TDM.
In the university students’ category, the victory smiled upon the team from the City University of Macau and for “Clube de Canoagem Baía do Mar” in the women’s category.
Yestreday was mostly dedicated to the standard size boats and longer distance (500m) races, and the Fire Service continued their trophy collection by winning the Open Category almost one second ahead of Monte Carlo Sports Club, who fought until their last paddle.
On the first final of the day, the Beijing Normal University – Zhuhai had already raised the winners’ flag in the Macau Invitational Dragon Boat Race – University Category taking the win over the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology by only six tenths of a second.
As for the women’s category, the team from MGM Macau strived for the final win leaving the closest opposition, Galaxy Pearl, over three seconds behind.
In the only short distance competition of the day, the Customs Bureau Team came out on top of the IACM-Green Warriors and the Electrical and Mechanical Services Department, winning the 2016 Macau Civil Servant Invitation Small Dragon Boat Race.
On the sidelines of the event the Times spoke to a woman surnamed Cheng, one of the team members of MGM Macau, who revealed that the team had been training since April for this competition.
Questioned if the rain made the task more difficult, she said: “We are used to it, it always rains every year during the races and even during practice it always rained a lot.”
The 2016 Macau International Dragon Boat Races resume on Thursday with the Macau International Invitation Standard Dragon Boat Race in both Open and Women categories.