Читать книгу Paddles Up!. Dragon Boat Racing in Canada онлайн

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Since then the Hong Kong International Festival Races (HKIR) have taken place annually on the first weekend after the traditional Dragon Boat Festival (Duan Wu Jie) races that are held on the fifth day of the fifth moon, usually in June.

Triggered by the successful marketing campaign that followed, which promoted Hong Kong through the HKIR, dragon boat racing rapidly spread across the world into the Pacific Region, Europe, and North America, but particularly to the United Kingdom and Canada. A tradition of paddling open canoes meant that Canadians took to the dragon boat like the proverbial duck to water!

This explosion of dragon boat activity, emerging out of the Hong Kong International Races, led to the founding of dragon boat associations around the world in the late 1980s. British, Hong Kong, Chinese, and Canadian associations were among the first.

These national organizations, led by the British Dragon Boat Racing Association (BDA), established in 1987, came together and founded the European Dragon Boat Federation (EDBF) in 1990, followed in 1991 by the International Dragon Boat Federation (IDBF), and finally the Asian Dragon Boat Federation (ADBF) in 1992.