This [boat racing] is my favorite sport to watch, but I didn’t have a chance to race. So I decided to interview one of my dad’s friend. He has a lot of experience in boat racing from 1984-2010 and I want to know how he leads their team to success and the secret of his team’s training.
Vinas: Since your team has 54 paddlers, what is your technique to make your boat go fast and how do you control your teams?
Bounty: The person paddling in the front is called the bowman and the bowman gives the signal for the team to go faster or slower by using the paddle to hit a side of the boat. For example: hitting one time means get ready and hitting three time means go faster (it depends on the racing of how often we need to signal). First of all we start paddling fast about 30 times and everybody has to paddle the same time and the same speed. After that we paddle slow to breathe about 10 times and we start to go fast again. We repeated the repetition until the end (sometimes if the boat racing is head to head, we don’t have time to rest, we just put all the energy into paddling).
V: Is it the paddle that makes the boat go faster? And what kind of the paddles do you use for tournaments?
B: Yes, it is. It’s the paddles, paddlers and the boat. A lot of villages have different paddle sizes, but our paddle is 1.20 meters long [total], and the handle is 80 cm and the bottom of the paddle is 40 cm long and 15 cm [wide] and the end of the bottom paddle is an oval-like shape. The boat, we have to prepare our boat before the tournament.
V: How do you get your team to work together ?
B: In my village, most of us work at a different time; it is very hard for us to come at the same time because most of us are farmers, some days we are all together but somedays we are not. Even though we have a hard time, I think we do what we love and we love what we do that is why. It was not a big problem for us. We train hard and every minute we put an effort to it.
V: What is your approach for racing against other boats?
B: Every single time, when we have a boat racing we will decorate our boat’s head by fabric with ruby, we choose the bright color, and we also have our boat name on the head of the boat. We have the same shirt logo and we paddle to show off our strength to make other teams nervous…
V: Since your team has a lot of people, who sponsors your team and how does your team manage?
B: It is depends on which year, for example: the last couple of years we got sponsored from the Beer Laos company and this year our village will support us by some wealthy families and the people in the village. We collect the money for our team to buy food, the team uniform, and supply for the tournament.
V: What do you eat to prepare for tournament?
B: We don’t have any rule of diet because we just eat whatever our family provides us. We eat sticky rice, fish, chicken, pork, and beef; but we eat a lot more vegetables than meat. We don’t use any supplement to help build strength, because we train the old fashion way. Even now a day we get a lot of supplements and protein, but we just want to keep our traditional way for our sportsmanship.
V: What kind of the training does your team do for boat racing?
B: we start training 2 months before tournament. We run three times a week in the morning on the street about 30 minutes to 45 minutes, and in the evening we practice paddling the boat at the Mekong River for 2 hours.
V: What makes your team successful in boat racing?
B: Every team can say “We train hard”, but it is not all of them. Because we also have to prepare a boat, such as checking the boat before the tournament, and the paddlers ready for the race, and we work hard together as the team and we have an inspiration from our village.
V: Thank you for your time. It is very interesting to hear and I hope your team is successful in the future.
Posted on Nov 26,2018
Boat Racing Festival (Boun Suang Heua) 