Dragonslayers

There was an odd music that came with the entrance of the dragons. Less like the sound of small bells, closer to the sound of clinking coins. Or to the jangle of 80 gold medals hanging from the necks of 16 dragon boat paddlers flushed with the victory of a world championship.

They came home with a world record, five gold medals, and two silvers. They are members of the Philippine Dragon Boat Federation (PDBF), two-time world champions, whose competition videos are played in slow motion by foreign teams hoping to measure the secret behind their strokes.

All are former national team athletes who recently resigned from the Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) after a Philippine Olympic Committee (POC) decision dissolved the federation’s National Sports Commission status. They are no longer a national team.

The stripping of their ranking came at the end of a series of moves led by the PSC and POC that began with the team’s removal from last year’s Asian games. The athletes underwent time trials to qualify, and when the speed of their boats beat last year’s Asian games records, PSC official and retired colonel Jeff Tamayo claimed the athletes were too fast, and wrote a report claiming the paddlers were probably on steroids. Tests came out negative. In October 2010, at a tournament in Camarines Sur, the team the world could not beat paddled in tears moments after finding out it had been dropped from the Asian contingent.

In January of 2011, just as the team was preparing to defend its title at the Tampa Bay World Championships, the original 44-strong group of paddlers was put under the management of the Philippine Canoe-Kayak Federation, leaving behind their coaches and dissolving their federation. They were told it was the condition necessary to retain their national team status.

Fifteen paddlers resigned after two weeks, and returned to train under Annabelle Tario, now the PDBF’s head coach and a former women’s national team paddler. It meant the runaway team not only had to train, it was forced to raise funds for its members’ travel, training, even food to feed the team of 16. It wasn’t simply a matter of name and loyalty. The Canoe-Kayak Federation now had the right to decide on coaches, training, membership, standards, and all matter of issues that the PDBF knew far better and had more of a right to.

The plight of an underdog in pursuit of victory caught the public’s interest. Funding and support came in. When the ragtag team flew to Tampa Bay on the third of August carrying borrowed paddles, it flew after announcing it would win the gold or die trying. And while the dragons fought it out on foreign waters, cheered on by the local Filipino community in Florida, back home, PSC and POC defended their position against supporting the team.

The PSC said its hands were tied. It could not accredit and fund a team without approval from the POC. The POC said it could not accredit the dragon boat team because the International Olympic Commission does not recognize the sport, irrelevant of the fact that the International Dragon Boat Federation, the international governing body, acknowledges only the PDBF. The POC claimed it had been sent a memorandum from the IOC saying that the sport is a discipline under Canoe-Kayak. The memorandum is yet to be made public, but POC later rephrased its description of the supposed memo. It said the federation “can” be put under Canoe-Kayak, and it followed the “recommendation.” As of this writing, the United States, Singapore, Australia and British Dragon Boat national teams are independent of their national canoe-kayak federations, and have not been compelled by the IOC.

National team status does not demand IOC recognition. The POC constitution only demands affiliation to “a relevant International Federation.” It is why there are national teams for wushu, wakeboarding, waterskiing, billiards, bowling, sepak takraw, and even Tamayo’s own soft tennis national team, even if none of these sports have the chance dragon boat has of eventually being included in the Olympics. The point has never been winning an Olympic medal, it is winning among the best there is, to be faster, higher, stronger, irrelevant of the Olympics, which is why nobody demanded that Manny Pacquiao or Wesley So produce an Olympic medal. Dragon boat was funded for nine years without being an Olympic-accredited team.

And yet, say the POC and PSC in numerous interviews, isn’t the point to win an Olympic medal? Why waste time and money? Why can’t the team stop taking the easy way out and switch to canoe-kayak? And so what the five medals, the paddlers are old, they should retire, they fought against beginners, they played in small races, isn’t the point to win in the service of the nation?

“They have the body, they have everything, but as we all know, ampaw na lang ’yun,” Tamayo said.

When PSC’s Ritchie Garcia and Jeff Tamayo claim that the Olympic gold is the end-all and be-all of government funding, perhaps they would like to pull funding from canoe-kayak, which requested the second-highest budget, has never brought home even the shadow of an Olympic medal, and whose head has the gall to belittle the dragon boat win by saying the dragon paddlers were competing against developing nations—an insult Italy, America and Australia have yet to hear. Perhaps the PSC would like to limit the funding of basketball or football or all the other sports that do not bring home gold medals in spite of the heart of their athletes. PSC’s rationale is ridiculous, but perhaps it forgets what the Olympic ideal is, to pursue excellence and sportsmanship and brotherhood. The point is the pursuit. The Olympics, after all, never puts its medals for sale.

In the Kingdom of Chu, 2,000 years ago, there lived a poet and a statesman named Qu Yuan. He was loved by the people for his integrity and courage, and for years stood against the corruption in the government. Many among the couriers resented him, and in their envy, devised intrigue after intrigue until the poet was finally banished by the emperor who once had his trust.

For many years, the poet called Qu Yuan wandered the countryside, living among the people as he wrote poems of patriotism and honor. Some say he despaired, others say he was brave to the very end. On the fifth day of the fifth month of the 200th year before the birth of Christ, Qu Yuan threw himself into the Mei Lo River as a final act of protest against the corrupt government. The fishermen who saw him rushed to their boats in an attempt to save the poet they loved. They sailed up and down the river searching for him, thrashing the water with their oars and paddles to frighten away the fishes that might find his body.

For many years after, in a tradition that spanned generations, paddlers stood at the head of long boats in search of Qu Yuan. Paintings of dragons breathed fire down the sides of the boat, while a drummer pounded a rhythm to frighten evil spirits. They were called dragon paddlers. The story goes that when they rowed, they rowed for honor.

Two thousand years after, the dragons still fly.