Ice Dragon-boat stirs up winter sports fashion

YINCHUAN - First National Ice Dragon-boat Race was held on Sunday in Yinchuan, the capital city of Northwest China's Ningxia Hui autonomous region.

The new kind of dragon-boat race stirs up people's outdoor sport enthusiasm. Over 500 ice sport lovers in 38 teams from Shanghai, Guangdong, Shaanxi, Hebei, Gansu and Ningxia compete in the race, according to source from Yinchuan Bureau of Sports.

Ice dragon-boat is developed from the China's traditional folk water sports dragon-boat, which is very popular in southern China, especially around the Dragon-boat Festival. The boat is designed as an 11-seat ice vehicle in about 13 meters long with two ice-skates "engine" under it. Team members have to move the iron stick together to gain speed.

"The ice dragon-boat race borrows the rules of traditional dragon-boat race as well as the ice vehicle game in northern China," said Sun Honggang, deputy director of Yinchuan Bureau of Sports.

The race features three speed events: 12-men's 250-meter direct route race, 12-women's 250-meter direct route race and 5-family 150-meter race.

Liu Hui, a player in Yinchuan women's team told Xinhua, the new sport attracted more people to evade from cold to release perspiration and passion.

Actually, ice dragon-boat is just a three-year-old activity. Yinchuan first designed the ice dragon-boat and held regional ice dragon-boat race in 2009. And the ice dragon-boat obtained China's design patent last year.

Yinchuan, renowned for its "72 rivers" in history, boasts many natural lakes and rivers. So far, two regional ice dragon-boat races were held in Yinchuan from 2009 to 2010.

"Ice dragon-boat is a new member in dragon-boat sporting family, and also a kind of generation and innovation to the traditional sports," said Hu Jianguo, director with Social Gymnastics Guiding Center of General Administration of Sports of China.