The Lao Buddhist Temple team was scoring big in the dragon boat races, and its members were letting the world know it.
A chain of temple members snaked along the shore of Sloan’s Lake singing the team’s praises in a Laotian chant.
Oun Phouthavong, 46, a short, sandy- haired woman shielding herself from the sun with an umbrella, translated. “They say, ‘We are No. 1 in the boat race.’ ”
After seven years of competing in the annual Colorado Dragon Boat Festival, the temple team had moved up to the top adult competitive division.
It is a development that has put Denver’s small Laotian community on the map, said Tom Pong, 37, the team captain.
Images of the race taken by a television crew will bounce off a satellite and be broadcast in Laos, Pong said.
The annual festival is a chance to pass on tradition to a new generation, said Pong, who owns a small insurance agency.
Like many of the attendees, Pong immigrated to the United States. He came from the troubled nation after Communist Pathet Lao ousted a coalition government in 1975. “I came here in ’79 when I was 9. I am a semi-native, I tell people. I grew up here.”
Phouthavong, who studied to be a teacher in her hometown of Vientiane, fled Laos in 1979 when she was 18.
She almost didn’t make it out of the country, she said. “I crossed the river. People behind me got shot. I see the bodies floating in the Mekong River.”
After a year at a refugee camp in Thailand, where she met her future husband, she moved to Denver.
The Dragon Boat Festival is a big event for her, she said. “Back home we have this event. I feel really warm,” she said of attending the festival.
In addition to the colorful dragon boat races, the event showcases an array of traditional and contemporary performing artists, cultural customs and cuisine from Asia and the Pacific.
“This is actually pretty cool,” said Andrea Richter, 28, whose fiance, David Enslow, 25, was rowing in the race for Zachry Engineering.
The couple moved to Denver recently from Las Vegas with their 2 1/2-year-old daughter, Raven.
The Zachry Power Dragons, which raced in the adult corporate division, were doing well by mid-afternoon, Enslow said. “We are undefeated so far.”
Tom McGhee: 303-954-1671 or tmcghee@denverpost.com
