Ok, maybe they were harshly punished in one heat, being disqualified from the race due to an improperly buckled life vest. Maybe, depending on what the rules say and what actually happened.
But to intentionally disrupt another heat full of participants who had trained for the event for months and had nothing whatsoever to do with the prior event, all I can say is :raspberry:
Bunch of cry babies exhibiting bad sportsmanship and giving all foreigners in Taiwan a black eye.
Hopefully they will be punished again. . . if not by the Taiwan authorities by GOD!
[quote]This year’s Taipei International Dragon Boat Championship was gripped by controversy yesterday after a disaffected dragon boat team positioned its canoe in the middle of the race course on Keelung River and then jumped ship to further disrupt the race, participants said.
Pandemonium broke out yesterday morning after the co-ed dragon boat team from National Taiwan Normal University’s Mandarin Training Center (MTC) were demoted from the “winners’ bracket” to that of “losers” because a team member had failed to properly wear his life vest, MTC rower Eric Chou said. . .
Enraged by the mysterious retroactive scoring, the MTC team . . . decided to use its race in the losers’ bracket to send a message to organizers. . .
"We rowed to the middle of the course and stopped, blocking [other teams]," he said.
When a throng of motorboats roared over to tug their canoe ashore, the rowers then jumped ship and “floated around for a little bit,” he said.
The rowers’ main gripe, Chou said, was that organizers offered no explanation for annulling their winners’ bracket placement until after the team’s river plunge.
“They told us only after all this that one of our teammates’ life vests hadn’t been properly buckled on Sunday,” he said. . .[/quote]
taipeitimes.com/News/front/a … 2003365880