| Dragon Boat Racing |
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| Written by P.A. Newby | |
| Tuesday, 06 July 2010 08:59 | |
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Dragon Boat racing is central to Chinese culture and is steeped in ancient rituals and religious traditions that have been observed uninterrupted for more than 25 centuries.
 The history and culture of "modern" Dragon Boat Racing goes back over 2200 years with its roots in the legend of Qu Yuan and the sacrifice he made for his country in the third century B.C. when he drowned himself in the Miluo River in the State of Chu (now Hunan Province) in Southern China, in protest against the corrupt regimes of the "Warring States".Dragon Boating must be the world’s oldest organised continuous competitive activity,  pre-dating the Olympic Games of ancient Greece by at least a thousand years. Proof of this claim can be found at the Qu Jialing cultural ruins in Hubei Province, where a drawing of a dragon boat race on a spinning wheel was unearthed, that was between 4000 and 5000 years old. Other artefacts, such as the steering oars used in dragon boating, along with patterns of a dragon dated at over 7000 years old have been excavated in other parts of China. As far as we know, Dragon Boats served no dedicated utilitarian or military purpose but ancient Chinese generals once used dragon boat paddling as a fitness and training exercise for soldiers.It is currently estimated that dragon boating has developed to the point where over 50  million people in nearly 60 countries world wide participate in dragon boat competitions around the globe. The majority race in China and South East Asia, with over 150,000 estimated participants in Europe; 90,000 in North America and 20,000 in Oceania. P.A. Newby amaBele Belles founder and coach WCDBA Chairman, SADBA Vice President, IDBF Rep for Southern Africa
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