Kelvin Yih

“I was on varsity rugby when I was in college. The varsity dragonboat captain was my friend, and said they needed people for the big competition. I thought it was easy, and I was totally wrong, then I fell into dragon boat because it really challenges me.

When I was in the military back in 2012, I led my troop’s dragon boat team and raced in Hsinchu. We prepared for 3 months: we would get up at 4am and do a 10km run, then train on the boat for 3 hours and run another 10km before sleeping. We also did countless push-ups and sit-ups between training sessions. It was hell. 

When it came to the final race in the competition, at 450m we were losing by just a nose of the dragon head, but were already exhausted from 11 races before that final. We pushed and forced ourselves and finally we won, by 0.1 sec. I still remember when we went through the end, we all cried like babies!”

[Kelvin Yih/易翔 (Taipei, Taiwan), paddler on Black Tide, and coach of TaiWanKa.]

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