Paddlers hailed for WCup feat

MANILA, Philippines - Asia Brewery has lauded the Cobra Philippine Dragonboat Federation team’s impressive campaign in the recent Dragonboat World Cup where it bagged two gold medals, one silver and a bronze to improve from No. 5 to No. 2 in the world ranking.

“The outstanding performance of the Cobra-PDBF team showed what hard work, perseverance, discipline and dedication can achieve once we set our mind into it,” said Dan Ong, senior brand manager of the sponsoring Cobra Energy Drink.

The Filipino paddlers, powered by Cobra Energy Drink, thus surpassed their one-gold, two-silver haul two weeks ago in the Asian Dragon Boat rowing meet in Macau.

They capped their superb stint with a thrilling victory over the Chinese, winning the 500-meter mixed premier standard boat race in two minutes, 3.6 seconds, just three-tenths of a seconds faster to the hosts’ time of 2:03.9. The Canadians (2:04.5) settled for the bronze.

“That team was composed of top notch paddlers from Philippine Airforce, Philippine Navy and the cream of PDBF paddlers. Our Cobra PDBF team showed the unity and deep pool of talent that we have in dragon boat rowing,” said Hubert Tan, Asia Brewery Inc. vice president for marketing.

The squad also took the gold in the 100-meter mixed premier standard boat contest with a time of 23.44 seconds, besting Canada (23.82) and China (24.04), which  copped the silver and bronze medals, respectively, in the 16-nation competition considered as the Olympics of dragon boat rowing.

China foiled the Cobra-PDBF team’s for a third gold, narrowly winning the 200-meter premier mixed contest in 48.59 seconds against the latter’s silver-medal time of  49.56 seconds. Canada once again took third (49.9).

Coupled with the bronze medal they won in 400-meter small boat event for men and women, the Filipinos emerged second overall behind Chinese, who bagged three golds and one silver medal, and were on the podium in all of the four events they saw action in. 

“Like our stint in our Asian Dragon Boat competition in Macau, our team displayed a warrior’s spirit,” said PDBF president Marcia Cristobal. “We lived up to the ‘Lakas ng Pinas’ motto and showed it against our rivals.”