Can we narrow the gap with "Niujian" in Chinese university rowing
"Many students don't even know the difference between rowing and dragon boat when they enter university." "Our club has difficulty recruiting people. How do you make students fall in love with rowing?" "How can Chinese university rowing teams quickly narrow the gap with the world?"... "
On the afternoon of September 14th, the Cambridge University Rowing Team and the Oxford Brooks University Rowing Team also had a casual discussion on diverse rowing cultures with Chinese universities such as Peking University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Tongji University, Xi'an Jiao Tong University, and Shanghai University of Science and Technology. In addition to chatting about their understanding and love for rowing, coaches and team members of domestic university rowing teams also cherish this opportunity and repeatedly raise "difficulties". The two world's top university rowing teams share their experiences and insights on carrying out rowing without reservation.
"I have been involved in rowing since I was young."
The hottest topic in Shanghai sports recently is undoubtedly the 2023 Shanghai Rowing Open. In the past two years, this Shanghai independent brand competition has attracted a lot of attention and has been widely loved and praised by Shanghai citizens. This year's competition has entered its third year, and for the first time, foreign participating teams have been invited to high-level rowing teams such as the Cambridge University Rowing Team, Oxford Brooks University Rowing Team, and the Australian National Rowing Team.
The rowing competition between the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge has a history of nearly 200 years. It is not only regarded as the origin of modern rowing, but also the oldest modern sports competition in the world. The two schools are also one of the cradles of British Olympic rowing champions. In their introduction process, the key factors for the development of rowing were summarized by the reporter as three points: the threshold for participation should be low; The support from the school is significant; There are many competitions.
"I have been involved in rowing since I was young. We play rowing either at school, join clubs, or with our families." "Many schools have rowing teams, especially universities, where almost every college has a team, and the school team selects from them..." Several members of the Cambridge University rowing team shared.
This sounds a bit of a Versailles, after all, to achieve these, it must be built on a certain foundation. For example, the UK has a well-developed natural water system, as well as an extremely developed artificial canal water system with a total length of over 6000 kilometers, which determined that shipping was once an important mode of transportation in the UK. In addition, the formation of rowing tradition among the people is not only based on natural conditions, but also on certain historical backgrounds. As early as the 17th century, the boatmen of the Thames often made bets on who could row to their destination first in order to make their daily work more enjoyable. Over time, casual gambling became a formal rowing competition. So in the first 100 years before rowing was introduced to China, this sport was almost exclusively owned by foreigners, and Chinese people were just spectators. Until the establishment of the People's Republic of China, Chinese people began to truly become the helmsmen of rowing.
"Let everyone have the opportunity to give it a try"
"How to popularize it? I think we should give everyone the opportunity to try it as much as possible!" said the coach of the Cambridge University rowing team. From a fundamental perspective, Chinese rowing cannot be compared to the UK, but it does not mean that promoting and popularizing this sport is impossible. At least in terms of natural conditions, there is a great potential for development in Chinese rowing. Of course, due to differences in natural scenery, some universities in China have advantages, while others have some inherent shortcomings. For example, the rowing team at Sun Yat sen University has its own river capable of carrying rowing sports, and training is conducted conveniently within the school. The Peking University rowing team is very envious of this. "Although there is a lake on our campus, it is not enough to carry out rowing, so we have to drive back and forth for 4 hours every time we train, so we can only go underwater on weekends."
From this perspective, Shanghai undoubtedly has advantages. Shanghai is born and prospered by water. Shanghai can become the birthplace and development hub of Chinese rowing, which is also one of the prerequisites. The rowing teams from universities such as Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Shanghai Tongji, who participated in the exchange meeting on the same day, had a river near the school, making training more convenient. With the effective comprehensive improvement of the Suzhou River environment and the successive opening up of the Huangpu River and Suzhou River shoreline, Shanghai's "One River, One River" has also begun to create an excellent stage for rowing. As people can embrace more and more rippling waters up close, their interest in appreciating and participating in water sports also becomes stronger.
However, at present, Shanghai has not fully utilized this "natural advantage": there are not many schools that carry out rowing sports, and there is also a need for more rowing events with low barriers and convenient participation for student groups. In the introduction of two British university teams, the reporter learned that many universities in the UK have rowing teams. Among the ten "high-level clubs" named by the British Rowing Association, seven are university clubs. In addition to the Oxford Cambridge competition, there are many university rowing competitions in the UK, with over ten bilateral intercollegiate competitions, including the North England competition between Durham University and Newcastle University, the Scotland competition between the University of Edinburgh and the University of Glasgow, the Ireland competition between Trinity College Dublin and Queen's University of Belfast, and the Wales competition between Swansea University and Cardiff University, among others.
Face the gap and find the pattern
How to lower the participation threshold for this sport and create opportunities for more citizens to participate in rowing? The sports managers in Shanghai, the organizers of "boarding" events, and so on are all taking action - it can be said with certainty that "boarding" is just the beginning, and "little boarding" are slowly rowing in.
In this rowing event, the Cambridge University Rowing Team and the Oxford Brooks University Rowing Team were not in the same group as domestic university rowing teams - they were grouped with top international rowing experts such as the Australian national rowing team, as well as strong domestic teams such as Shanghai, Shandong, and Jiangsu with some national team members, in the elite group rather than the university group competition. This also indicates that the current level of Chinese university rowing teams is far from enough to compete with the "Bull Sword". But this is also the significance of this exchange meeting - to face the gap, find patterns, learn from successful practices, and accelerate the development of rowing.
At the exchange meeting that day, there was an episode that made the reporter quite excited. A member of the Tongji University rowing team issued a "challenge letter" to the Xi'an Jiaotong University rowing team in a very friendly way. "The competition between our two teams feels like a 'bull sword confrontation'." This young player clearly feels the unique charm of inter school bilateral competitions such as the 'bull sword confrontation'. In many sports competitions where one family is happy and one family is worried, individual participating teams are often not afraid of losing. However, if it is a 'one family is happy and one family is worried' bilateral competition, it has value from both the educational significance of sports and the perspective of school sports education. What we often refer to as "setback education" is a lifelong benefit for children through a rowing competition.
