Racing toward Prague

I follow Wong down to one of the dragon boats, gingerly stepping onto its slippery, wet deck. Juul offers me the drummer's seat, a small, armless chair perched on the boat's prow. After eyeing the brackish, choppy water, I choose a lower bench instead. Wong and Lynne Franks-Meinert sit nearby in the lead paddlers' seats; their job is to set the pace for all the paddlers behind them.

Franks-Meinert, 40, a homemaker with huge blue eyes and a short mop of brown hair, runs a dragon boating club in Pittsburgh. She drove five hours to make this training session -- a commute she plans to repeat every week this season for a chance to compete in Prague. "To be on the U.S. team," she says, "you have to be the best of the best."

Clutching a bullhorn in one hand, coach Bob McNamara, 52, drives a small motor launch alongside our boat. Gruff like an army commander, McNamara will coach the U.S. team as it defends its title. He flashes a signal to the helmsman -- and we're off. Twenty athletes plunge their blades into the water as one, and we surge forward with a momentum that nearly knocks me off my seat. I grab the seat, trying to hold on. This is the "swing," which happens only when 20 strong paddlers are in sync. With every powerful stroke, we leap forward.

At the other end of the boat stands our steerswoman, Margaret Gordon, 46, her dark hair covered by a green knit hat. She belts out a steady stream of instructions in a deep, authoritative voice. "Lift it!" she yells. "Paddle! Reeeeeach it out!"

"Power 30!" shouts Wong, and everyone paddles furiously for 30 strokes. The boat is silent except for the sound of water rushing over the blades. Squinting, panting and sweating, the paddlers pull their blades out in unison and sit up straight, each person's outside arm locked ahead, then lean forward and repeat the cycle.

But Gordon isn't happy. Glaring in my direction, she shouts for everyone to stop. For a moment I panic that I did something wrong. Then Gordon directs Franks-Meinert to switch with another paddler. She quickly moves to the back of the boat. I ask Wong what's the matter. "Her stroke rate may not be on time, so it throws everyone else off," he says.

In one world championship race four boats crossed the finish line almost simultaneously; it took 45 minutes for the judges to figure out which team had won. "The difference between a gold medal and finishing fourth," Wong says, "was a few hundredths of a second."

Wong discovered dragon boating, a Chinese sport that dates back 2,500 years, while visiting Hong Kong with his father in 1996. They attended that year's world championship tournament, and everything about the races -- including the elaborately decorated boats, complete with dragon heads and tails -- impressed him. Back home he was surprised to learn that most of the U.S. team had trained in his own backyard for the Philadelphia Dragon Boat Association, which he didn't even know existed.

Although he had never paddled in his life, Wong joined the team in 2001. Each morning he made the hour-long commute from his home in Holland, Pa. On his first day, afraid of missing the early-morning launch, he arrived at 5 a.m. and sat in the dark parking lot until practice began half an hour later. That first practice was brutal. "The person sitting to my left looked over and said, 'Don't worry. It's gonna be over soon.'" Undeterred, Wong kept coming back.

"The easiest thing to do in business -- or athletics -- is to quit," he says. "But if you make a commitment, you do what you have to do."

The rain continues. As we near the end of practice, the exhausted paddlers race to the finish. It's a final sprint, and everyone is yelling. There is no finish line, but that doesn't matter -- the goal is to beat the other boat. Gordon admonishes her team: "Let's keep our focus on our boat, not on the other one. Reach it out!" Heffernan hollers, "You guys look sluggish, like you've been eating too many jelly beans!"

Clothes plastered to their bodies, the athletes paddle 70 strokes a minute, kicking up whitecaps along the river's surface. "We go a lot faster than that during a race," says Wong, gasping for air with the force of the strokes.

And just like that, practice is over. We glide back to the dock, while Coach McNamara stands in his boat, clearly dissatisfied with team's effort.

"Prague is won with the work you do in April, not in August!" he shouts.

Back on land we all rush to our cars and change into dry clothes. A small group heads to a local diner for coffee and a hearty breakfast of eggs, bacon and pancakes. Between bites, the teammates trade tales of crashes, men overboard, sinking boats and, of course, past glory.

Wong is in his element. He loves this river, this diner and, most of all, this team. The bond forged on the water during each practice may be the biggest reason he keeps coming back and training, week after week, year after year.

"We're in this together," he says, gratefully accepting another cup of coffee. "These are the people you go into battle with."

It's been another day on the river -- and another day closer to Prague.  

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