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The 2024 Jinji Lake Dragon Boat Race will start on June 10 at the Moonlight Pier. Recently, the participating teams started a one-month preparation training at the Xietang Old Street Training Base.
Despite the rain outside, the teams were enthusiastic about training. The young dragon boat team in front of me, from Jinji Lake School, was just established in April this year and is composed of 25 students who love water sports. Although the training has been less than 2 months, the players are looking forward to the competition.
Ji Xinyao, a seventh-grade student at Jinji Lake School, said that when she saw the participating teams working together, she wondered if she could join in, participate in the exercise, and exercise her ability to unite. They come here every Saturday and Sunday to train, and they also train intensively.
There are new players, and there are old faces. Founded in 2012, the Swiss International Team has participated in 13 consecutive Jinji Lake Dragon Boat Races, consisting of 40 team members from 16 countries including Switzerland, Spain and Germany.
Sonya, a member of the Suzhou Swiss International Team, said that she started dragon boat rowing in 2012, when the team was full of girls, so she called the "White Lady" team. Later, there were male team members, and they were renamed the Swiss International Dragon Boat Team, and their love and enthusiasm for dragon boats united everyone, and dragon boats also deepened their understanding of traditional Chinese culture.
There are a total of 69 teams and 1,492 athletes participating in this year's Dragon Boat Race, which are divided into two types: competition group and invitation group. Among them, there are 53 teams in the competition group and 16 teams in the invitation group.
Wu Qianlan, a staff member of the Organizing Committee of the Jinji Lake Dragon Boat Race, introduced that an international invitation group was set up for the first time, and the teams were basically from 7 countries including Singapore, Austria, Switzerland, and Russia. This year, a team from Singapore was invited to participate in the competition to strengthen the friendly cultural exchanges between China and New Zealand, with a total of 8 teams from foreigners, accounting for about 12%.