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June 17, 2014

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Home » District » Putuo

Family racers relish chance to participate in holiday fun

CHI Yi works and lives in Changzheng Town in Putuo. This year she and her husband participated in the family dragon boat race. The family game is introduced this year to add fun to the annual race.

They trained with coaches for a month at Changfeng Park to prepare for the race. Both Chi and her husband were professional athletes in the past. She played soccer while her husband Lu Chen was on the Shanghai baseball team.

“When I saw it was a family race, I thought it would be a good idea,” Chi said. “This was an opportunity for us to participate in public sports activities as a family.”

A few years back Chi participated in a dragon boat race as part of the Changzheng Town team.

“It’s not so different when you are paddling, but the small dragon boat is harder to balance and can flip over easier, but we haven’t encountered this,” she said.

The dragon boat race committee assigned a helmsman and drummer to each family.

Lu said they have many good friends who practice aquatic sports. They’ve seen it but never experienced it themselves.

Their daughter Lu Yangyi is a third grade student at Changzheng Central Primary School. Since she was too young to participate, she was cheering for her parents. But she takes figure skating and fencing lessons in her free time.

Though they were confident heading into the race, a mishap in the qualification event cost them dearly. The rudder on their boat was damaged and before they had paddled 10 meters they had to stop. They missed out on qualifying for the final race in the afternoon.

“For us, participating is more important,” Chi said.

“No matter what happened we were going to paddle to the finish line,” she added.




 

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