The National Chi Nan University’s rowing team captured second place in an invitational competition held in Jiangxi Province’s Nanchang City on July 1, beating out established teams from international schools including Harvard University, University of Cambridge, and University of Oxford. The top spot was cinched by New Zealand’s University of Otago.

Competing on Qingshanhu, the 2019 Nanchang·World Famous School Rowing Invitational and Masters Competition is modeled after the 6,000m rowing course on the Thames that has pitted Oxford against Cambridge rowers for over a century. NCNU was the sole team representing Taiwan at the four-day event that saw international athletes congregate in Nanchang City from June 28 to July 1.

Under the leadership and encouragement of NCNU President Oliver Yuhlong Su, the NCNU crew competed in both the 1,000m preliminary race and the 6,000m final event. It was a great display of their athleticism and endurance stemming from training daily at 5.30am in Sun-Moon Lake, a Nantou-based heritage site that borders the NCNU campus.

The final results, based on an aggregation of points awarded for both courses, are:

1. University of Otago, NZ

2. National Chi Nan University, TW (ROC)

3. Nanchang University, PRC

4. Harvard University, US

5. University of Oxford, UK

6. Tsinghua University, PRC

7. University of Tokyo, JP

8. Jiangxi Normal University, PRC

9. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US

10. University of Cambridge, UK

11. Tongji University, PRC

12. Xi’an Jiaotong University, PRC