A beautiful team sport

Sunday is dragonboating day. Below is a well-written description of the ultimate team sport that is dragonboating by a fellow dragonboating enthusiast.

Dragonboating can perhaps be considered as the ultimate team sport. There is no room for egomaniacs or rowers who think that they are superstars. Other competitive sports, such as soccer, basketball or rugby, provide situations where it is common and expected for players to stand out from others, to be praised for a performance even when on a losing team, to be a star.

In the sport of dragonboating, however, such opportunities do not exist. The reason is this: there is no way anyone watching a dragonboat race can tell who the best rower is. Thus rowers have no means of attaining individual glory. In dragonboating, any and all glory is shared equally among all members of the team. Everything is done as a team. We win as one. And we lose as one.

Thus there is no such thing as a perfect rower; there is only a perfect team. No matter how good an individual rower is, if he does not synchronize his stroke with the rest of the team, he becomes a liability. The concerns of the team always come before those of any one rower. Each rower will have to adapt to the system employed by the team, never the other way. The countless hours that we spend rowing together is an attempt to create the perfect team, everyone using the same stroke with precision.

Then comes race day. All the training is done and you are sitting in the boat waiting for the starting horn. When the race starts, when each and every person in the boat pulls with a single stroke, a single timing and a single purpose, the boat is no longer filled by a group of individuals, but by a singular entity, a perfect team.

And at the end, when your lungs scream for air and your arms feel like dead weights, every stroke you pull is no longer for yourself, no longer for glory, no longer to win the race even, but for the person beside you, behind you, in front of you. Each stroke is for those who have spent the months training with you for this one moment. You tell yourself, you will not let them down, you will never give up.

We call each other brothers and through the bonds forged by blood, sweat and tears, we are. One stroke, one heart, one soul. This is what lies at the heart of our team and what allows us to succeed.