Fireworks, Madness and Dragons

Two drownings separated by more than two millennia and an English brawl have conspired to send Scott Antel, an American lawyer working in Moscow, to Hong Kong this week for the world dragon boat championship.The first drowning was of the Chinese poet Qu Yuan, who in the fourth century B.C. threw himself into the Mi Low river after being expelled from the royal court. Legend has it that fishermen raced their boats to save him, and hence dragon boat racing was born.The second drowning, more tragic than poetic, was in February this year, when one of Antel's teammates from London's Royal Canoe Club drowned while training for another event. And when the prison door slammed on another teammate for fighting, the door opened for Antel."I thought I was retired from dragon boat racing here in Moscow," Antel said Sunday at the offices of Arthur Andersen, where he works in the tax and legal division. But when he was back in England in March he tried out for the team again and was accepted.It will be Antel's third trip to Hong Kong for the championship, where he says half a million people gather to watch the races on the harbor, blowing whistles, setting off fireworks and robustly enjoying themselves on a public holiday."It really is madness, " he says, recalling his trips in 1991 and 1992, when his team placed third in an international field embracing most South East Asian countries, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, several European countries and Great Britain, represented by the national champion, the Royal Canoe Club, founded in 1873 by Prince Edward, Queen Victoria's son."People in the north of England think we're posh, but it's not like that at all -- we're students, bricklayers, unemployed," he says, before launching into praise of the dedication of amateur British sportsmen, who make do with inadequate facilities and lack of sponsorship. "We are a little family," Antel adds, referring to of his 17 teammates. The dragon boat, traditionally headed by a carved dragon, is about 8.3 meters long, 1.2 meters across at its widest point in the middle, made of mahogany, teak or, these days, fiberglass, and takes 16 rowers, a steersman and a drummer.The drummer marks time for the rowers, and the Asian teams use whistle signals to slow down or speed up strokes to as many as 110 per minute over the 500 and 1,000 meter courses, which take about two and just over four minutes respectively."But our drummer is usually a woman cox, more for show," Antel says, adding that dragon boat racing, where the boats are traditionally fishing boats, is a "low-tech sport." This fact, together with the tradition and sportsmanship are, however, all aspects of dragon boat racing that appeal to Antel, who rowed as an undergraduate at Oxford, as he prepares for the two-day event starting June 20.Being separated from the team in England and being stuck in Moscow with frozen rivers all winter, Antel says his training has been less than ideal -- "running in the morning, lifting weights in the evening and rowing in the Olympic channel at Krylatskoe at weekends."Nevertheless he is "shooting to make the final," which will be between eight teams vying not for prize money but the pride of being the world's best, "and then we'll take it from there."The one thing he doesn't want to do is end up in the rough, murky waters of Hong Kong Harbor."You don't want to go swimming there," he says.