More than 30 teams from around the Northeast vie for prizes of up to $2,000 -- luring thousands of spectators.

01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, September 11, 2005

BY ARTHUR KIMBALL-STANLEY
Journal Staff Writer

PAWTUCKET -- Dragon boat racing has come a long way in the six years that it has been in Pawtucket.

What started in 1999 as a simple demonstration of the ancient Asian team paddling sport has grown into one of the most popular events of the Pawtucket Arts Festival. With thousands of people in attendance at yesterday's races at the School Street pier and more than 30 teams from around the Northeast competing for prizes of up to $2,000, the Taiwan Day Festival's Dragon boat races proved, for many, a wonderful way to spend a day down by the river.

Races began at 9 a.m., when teams, grouped into threes, went against each other to be placed in the Dragon (expert), Lion (intermediate) or Tiger (novice) divisions. For many on the water, viciously attacking the Blackstone with their multicolored paddles, this was the first time they had ever raced a 1,200-pound Dragon boat.

"This is actually the first time everyone on the team has actually turned out to paddle," Kirsten Murphy, captain of the Pawtucket Bucketeers, said. "We're getting a baptism by fire."

Murphy said her team was made up mostly of artists and designers from the Pawtucket area. She said they derived their team name from their city's less-than-gracious nickname.

"Events like this are really turning Pawtucket around, and so we thought it would be fun to make a joke out of what many people think," Murphy said. Though her inexperienced team wasn't sure if they would even win one race, Murphy said she didn't care. "We're just out here to have fun, and we're having a blast."

Though only a few years old in Pawtucket, Dragon boat racing has been around for thousands of years. According to Chinese legend, the sport began when fourth-century Chinese poet Ch'u Yuan drowned himself in the Mi Lo river after losing favor with the king of Chu, one of many warring states in ancient mainland China.

The people of Chu, so the story goes, were so grieved by Ch'u Yuan's death that they began to race around the river in their fishing boats, splashing their oars and beating their drums, trying to scare fish and water dragons away from Ch'u Yuan's body.

There are now Dragon boat races all over the world. The largest races in Toronto and Montreal, Canada, draw hundreds of boats to compete. The teams of 20 paddlers, a steersman at the tiller and a drummer to keep the beat, travel thousands of miles to compete. Only a few years ago, Dragon boat racing was up for consideration to be an Olympic sport.

While the largest races in the Northeast are held in Boston and New York, the annual Pawtucket races have become a major draw for even the big city teams.

May-Lynn Chang, a member of Living Root, a team based in Boston, said the Pawtucket races were a great place to get some experience in competitive races without going up against the best teams in the country.

"We did the Boston race in June, so this is our second race this year," Chang said. "We try to practice about twice a week, and we're getting better. But we're just tadpoles swimming in a very big pond."

In contrast was the Metropolitan Athletic Dragon team from New York, who, according to the captain Jay Lee, beat the United States national team earlier this year. Lee explained that the key to Dragon boat racing is not strength but team work and making sure everyone stokes in rhythm.

"When you really get the team synchronization going," Lee said, "the paddling becomes easy. It's just like you're gliding across the water."

Watching the action from the pier was Mayor James E. Doyle, who said he thought the races were a wonderful way to showcase what Pawtucket has to offer.

"This particular event is cultural as well as athletic," Doyle said. "As this event becomes bigger and bigger over the years it will give better publicity to our city, and help us to become an even greater community in the years to come."

But one down side to the event's increased popularity might be the competition from out of town. Team Pride of Pawtucket, which had won the races for the last several years and is led by the mayor's son Jamie Doyle, didn't even make it into the final heat yesterday.

The $2,000 grand prize was taken home by the Metropolitan Athletic Dragons.