Champs Dethroned While Stuck in San Diego : Dragon Racers Seek Funds to Regain Title

When Helen Pain hears of fund-raising efforts to place a San Diego entry in the America’s Cup yacht race, she feels a twinge of envy.

“They’re trying to raise $25 million to send a boat for the chance of winning,” Pain said. “We’re trying to raise one-tenth of 1% of that to send a team that’s already a champion.”

Pain is the leading San Diego proponent of dragon boating, the international competition of 40-foot Oriental canoes, manned by 22 rowers, a steersman and a drummer. The San Diego Dragon Boat Assn. claimed the world championship in 1984, winning races in Singapore and Macau against teams from 14 other countries. It was the first time in the 2,000-year history of dragon boat racing that a non-Oriental nation had won.

But because of financial troubles and city insurance regulations, the team has not been able to compete since winning the championship.

Pain and other dragon boat boosters now are racing against time to come up with $25,000 for air fare to send the 30-member contingent to Singapore to try to regain the title San Diego lost by default last year. The team has raised only a fraction of that sum and is pinning its hopes on large last-minute donations and proceeds from a Frankie Laine benefit concert to be held June 1 at the Bahia Hotel.

“At this point, we’re running scared,” said Pain. “If we don’t raise it from the Frankie Laine concert, then we hope there will be an emergency appeal that will bring it in from the community.”

San Diego has been represented in international dragon boat competition only since 1983, when the Republic of Singapore offered to present three boats to the city. Pain, owner of a San Diego travel agency, and others in the tourist industry supported the offer as a way of promoting travel between San Diego and Singapore, Pain said.

The city accepted the boats and in October, 1983, held the First International Dragon Boat Festival on Mission Bay, which drew 8,000 spectators. In 1984, a hastily assembled crew of 24 San Diegans, including five women, traveled to the Orient and won the world championship over a field of all-male teams.

When the team returned from its conquest, however, city officials did not exactly roll out the red carpet. Instead, they rolled in a trailer and took away the boats because the vessels did not have liability insurance, Pain said.

“The city said we had to have one million dollars’ worth of (insurance) on the boats,” said Egon Horcajo, the team’s coach. “We had the boats temporarily stored at the Catamaran Hotel and the city came out with a warrant and three guys with a trailer and dragged them away, right over the asphalt parking lot. They had no respect.”

The Dragon Boat Assn. spent 10 months haggling with the city to get the boats back until finally the Boy Scouts of America offered to include the boats under insurance coverage for its Explorer Scout program. With the boats impounded, San Diego’s dragon boat team had to sit home in 1985 while a crew from Australia took the world championship.

“We were invited back last year and we couldn’t train because we couldn’t get to the boats,” Horcajo said.

The San Diego team is penciled in for races in Singapore June 15 and Macau June 19. Although team members have done very little dragon boat training, Horcajo said they will be physically ready, since they all compete regularly as members of the Hano-Hano outrigger canoe club.

However, the rowers have to work on their synchronization. And, with uncertainty over the team’s even making it to the world championship, it has been difficult to get team members to practice with dragon boats in the morning in addition to their evening outrigger workouts.

Regardless of whether the team makes it to the Orient next month, Pain said, it will compete in San Diego’s Second International Dragon Boat Festival in October. Hotels and tourist attractions have committed to support that event, Pain said, “because it attracts people and fills hotel rooms.”

But Pain said she cannot get most of these businesses to help the team hit the road.

“Their vision is very local,” she said. “It’s not just a great opportunity for the 30 athletes who go. When that team goes over there, they will get a lot of headlines and publicity. All of Southeast Asia knows about San Diego.”

If San Diego does not make it to the world championships, Pain said, the team could lose its stature as the top non-Oriental dragon boat crew.

“Hong Kong gave six boats to Vancouver to use for demonstration at Expo,” she said. “The Canadians are putting together a team. They also gave Philadelphia four boats to increase interest on the East Coast. If we don’t compete this year, we’re out of the picture.”