For the second year in a row, the organisers of the Hong Kong International Dragon Boat Races are having trouble finding sponsorship. With just over two weeks to go before the races at the Tsim Sha Tsui East waterfront, they need another $2 million, or half of what it costs to host the event. That is a great pity. Since its launch in 1976, when the sole foreign team was a group of fishermen from Nagasaki, the event has grown in stature. Last year, 20 teams from overseas joined 100 local ones. This year, a similar number of foreign teams, including ones from Egypt and the former Soviet bloc, are slated to take part. Dragon boat racing dates back more than 2,000 years, to the Warring States period. In the kingdom of Chu, the scholar-statesman Qu Yuan was banished by the emperor after being wrongly accused of treason. In despair, he threw himself into the Milo River in Hunan province on the fifth day of the fifth month in the lunar calendar. The local people, who held Qu in high regard, immediately jumped into their boats and rushed in vain to save him. Legend has it that during their search, they also hit the water with their oars to prevent the fish from eating Qu's body. Thus was born the tradition of dragon boat racing. Across China, the annual races present a colourful spectacle, with paddlers rowing in unison to beating drums and gongs on boats decked with flags. For much of the 1980s and 1990s, the Hong Kong Tourism Association promoted dragon boat racing as a festival game with rich Chinese cultural characteristics, and the Hong Kong International Dragon Boat Races became a major item on the tourist calendar. Meanwhile, the Hong Kong Dragon Boat Association developed the event into a proper competitive sport, by specifying the boat's measurements, setting the rules and training the coaches. It even donated the moulds for making the long, thin boat with a dragon head and tail to a number of countries. The association helped found the International Dragon Boat Federation and the Asian Dragon Boat Federation. Today, more than 50 countries and regions are members of either or both associations, and international championship races are held every two years. This year, dragon boat racing will for the first time be on the programme of the East Asian Games to be held in Macau between October 29 and November 6. The president of the dragon boat racing association, Mike Chung Chi-hung, said an attempt was also made to include the sport in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. The application was rejected because a sport must be played in more than 70 countries to qualify. It is unfortunate that as dragon boat racing matures as an international sport, local efforts to hold the races have suffered since the tourism authority stopped sponsoring them in 2000. While the Tourism Board might have good reasons to stop funding the event, it would be sad if further efforts to promote dragon boat racing as an international sport were to suffer owing to a lack of local support. What if Hong Kong made a concerted effort to make dragon boat racing an Olympic sport? If canoeing, kayaking, rowing and windsurfing have become Olympic sports, why not dragon boat racing, which has a much richer cultural character? Hong Kong has already taken the critical first steps; it should not slacken now. The government, dragon boat association and others concerned should join hands to turn the event into a rival of the Rugby Sevens tournament. They should also work towards getting more countries to pick up the sport so it can become an Olympic event. C. K. Lau is the Post's executive editor, policy