Dry-land rowing for Beijing 2008?
Carl
http://www.worldrowing.com/
to the Shunyi regatta course having dried out & another river having its
flow diverted to replenish levels. This minimalist reference by FISA
follows articles in the UK press about a week back.
For background, this article:
http://www.china.org.cn/english/environment/170413.htm
gives an account from China of the serious water shortage than has long
been affecting the Beijing region.
Which makes it intriguing to read this apparently rather dated article
from the same source:
http://www.china.org.cn/english/2006/Jul/176117.htm
which ends:
"We still have to wait until the season ends in August to see if the
drought has really ended." I think we now know the answer to that one.
Beijing is in a fairly arid area, & much affected by industrial
pollution. Yet the IOC thought it a good place to plant its Games.
We have the stark evidence of the environmental & economic degradation
inflicted by the Games, & not least by Olympic rowing, upon Athens. Now
we see the escalating costs & increasingly stark environmental problems
that will afflict London 2012 (where rowing kept its nose a bit clean by
swiftly decamping to Dorney). The following (albeit politically
slanted) article makes interesting reading, with some wry & prescient
observations:
http://www.redpepper.org.uk/article555.html
The incessant bleating from the London Games organisers about "legacy"
was always trite & implausible; its endless repetition becomes tedious &
rings ever more hollow. The main stadium has more than doubled in cost
- so far - and the proffered excuses for cost escalation get ever more
strident, on the grounds I suppose that if you shout loud enough folk
will think you must be right.
The canoe/kayak slalom course may have to move, the industrial pollution
of its intended location being thought excessive. Nothing will be done
to alleviate the growing problem of sewage in the nearby Thames.
Funding for grass-roots sport is being cut as money is siphoned off to
create this 2-week splurge for a few thousand pro & semi-pro
sports-persons & for God knows how many official hangers-on. Then what
about all the redundant, high maintenance facilities that will remain,
as in Athens? In a land whose kids are getting ever fatter & less
athletic? AFAIK there is no research evidence to suggest that watching
overpaid professionals behave arrogantly will encourage couch potatoes
to get on their bikes, to walk, to run or to row, or to do anything more
strenuous than open another crisp-packet or beer.
Now we learn that no one may drive to or near the 2012 Olympics except,
of course, those lovely folk from the "Olympic Family" whose
relationship with athleticism is so remote that they can't be expected
to walk, bike or climb onto a bus like common folk & whose familiarity
with the rest of the human race is so slight that they'd hate to have to
rub shoulders with mere mortals.
So much, then, for "legacy". It is clearly bogus. And, to the extent
that competitive performances may increase through detection & careful
grooming of untapped athletic potential, the efforts of sports (like
rowing in the UK) to cherry-pick & train up kids with measurable
athletic potential carry unfortunate echoes of the past East German (&
alleged current Chinese) abuse of young athletes in pursuit of sport as
a political tool. Besides which, what's the point in an average person
aspiring to succeed in a sport (as they have so often in the past) when
those who call the shots care only about hot-housing the potential of
those already over-endowed with physical assets?
Sport for all? Hardly.
Carl
--
Carl Douglas Racing Shells -
Fine Small-Boats/AeRoWing low-drag Riggers/Advanced Accessories
Write: Harris Boatyard, Laleham Reach, Chertsey, Surrey KT16 8RP, UK
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URLs: www.carldouglas.co.uk (boats) & www.aerowing.co.uk (riggers)
Christopher Anton
"Carl" <ca...@carldouglas.co.uk> wrote in message
news:ffv9au$4mr$1$8300...@news.demon.co.uk...
> RQ has picked up an impressively brief FISA reference:
> http://www.worldrowing.com/
> to the Shunyi regatta course having dried out & another river having its
> flow diverted to replenish levels. This minimalist reference by FISA
> follows articles in the UK press about a week back.
>
has been draiend of water? In which case where's it gone? Or is it saying
that the river which feeds it has run dry?
Walter Martindale
"the montreal Olympics can no more run a deficit than a man can have a
baby" - Jean Drapeau - before the 1976 Olympics ran up billions of
dollars in deficit. The rowing course in Mtl was closed, and the
boathouses were locked until about 1981 - I don't know what hoops were
jumped to get it open again, but I think we were one of the first crews
to hop into the Karlisch we borrowed to row at the 1981 Cdn University
Rowign Champs..
The rowing course sits next to the Montreal F1 course, and next to
Casino Montreal. Lot of valuable parking space, currently filled with
water for a very small number of people, who don't pay very much, to
paddle about once in a while..
Carl, the same arguments are happening about Vancouver 2010 - some
citizens, vocal ones, want to stop the games because they don't benefit
the people of the Downtown Eastside Resident's Association (who, for
those not familiar with Vancouver, are in the poorest and most
crime-ridden area of Vancovuer).
Probably the same protest goes on for every OG - I guess we shouldn't
have them. Olympics, that is..
W
Carl
The flow of another river has been diverted - to re-fill & sustain the
water level in the course.
You will know, but others may not, that rowing courses tend not to be
impermeably lined. As, in times of drought or reduced rainfall, the
surrounding water table falls, the level in the lake must also fall:
some water evaporates from its surface at all times; the rest percolates
back into the surrounding soil driven by the static head difference when
the lake's surface is higher than that of the declining water table.
Lakes are subject to elevated evaporative losses which are accelerated
by warmth & wind, so need constant replenishment, either from incoming
streams & springs or through inwards percolation over & through the soil
from the surroundings &/or nearby rivers. Shunyi appears to be set in
an urban area, where roads & housing increase local temperatures &
evaporative effects. I'd imagine the course is normally fed by a nearby
river, whose level & flow will have fallen during the drought. Hence
the need to raid other rivers to counteract seepage & evaporative loss.
The sad history of the Aral Sea:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea
shows on a grand scale what can happen when state planning blindly
ignores hydrological realities. It is to be hoped that China will not
come soon to rue its grandiose Three Gorges Dam project, where problems
of erosion, sedimentation & pollution are being added to those of mass
displacement of local populations, with seismological consequences
anticipated due to the massive added water burden (a well-know problem
of large dam projects).
Carl
When men are driven by greed & hubris, history repeats itself again &
again. In this case, every 4 years.
Many businesses (including some I know) have been summarily displaced
from the vicinity of the London 2012 site. Sme have folded as a result.
So, in an uncanny repeat of Athens 2004, have travellers/Roma who had
set down roots in promised "permanent" sites but have been upheaved again.
Meanwhile the organisers, having paid peanuts for the land of the
displaced, now talk openly (in defence of growing budget over-runs) of
recouping the losses by selling this land at inflated prices after the
Games. A state-sanctioned "winkling" exercise, AKA theft, legitimised
by Olympic statutes that were pushed, under-debated, through Parliament
in haste to nail down the glorious Olympic bid success.
As a French politician once famously, & with no apparent appreciation of
the English vernacular, told a British interviewer: "When we are about
to drain the marshes we do not first consult the frogs".
Carl
For further information from China on this diversion of water to Shunyi,
see:
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90779/90867/6287862.html
A 13km underground pipeline was laid to divert 10% of the Wenyu River's
annual flow, via a purification plant, into the Chaobai River & feed the
Shunyi course. For 9 consecutive years the Chaobai has run dry!
Presumably most of this abstraction will occur during the drier months
preceding the regatta, so a 10% annual abstraction will be more like
total abstraction at that time.
This seems a very last-minute measure. Costing US$57.3 millions, it is
said to be "to improve the environment and scenery around the venue
during the Olympics". A high financial & environmental price indeed to
prevent dessication, during 2 weeks in 2008, of a course set in an
unsuitably arid location. How much is that, per rower?
coach
excavated is porous. As far as I am aware they have attempted to
negate this with a giant size pond liner. Unfortunately, as anybody
who has had a go at landscape gardening may know, it is very difficult
to achieve a 100% seal. The resulting combination of leakage and
evaporation excedes the volume of water entering from the river and
thus the lake has dried out.
I do not know enough of the geology of Bejing, but I cannot believe
that it could have been possible to construct a rowing facility in a
location that had either an impermiable rock base or was below the
natural summer water table.
Christopher Anton
"coach" <richard...@hotmail.co.uk> wrote in message
news:1193599160.5...@o3g2000hsb.googlegroups.com...
> The basic problem is the soil/rock from which the lake has been
> excavated is porous. As far as I am aware they have attempted to
> negate this with a giant size pond liner. Unfortunately, as anybody
> who has had a go at landscape gardening may know, it is very difficult
> to achieve a 100% seal. The resulting combination of leakage and
> evaporation excedes the volume of water entering from the river and
> thus the lake has dried out.
>
>
>in it?
Carl
Beijing has a long history of inadequate water supply & cavalier water
mismanagement. The water table in the arid Beijing region has been
severely lowered and a large depression has developed locally, due to
over-pumping of groundwater. See for example:
http://www.chs.ubc.ca/china/part1.pdf
Siting the course by the Chaobai river would make sense, as it makes
sense to locate Dorney beside the Thames & Holme Pierpont beside the
Trent, but not if that river is prone to drying up into what would
appear to be porous strata in which the water table is much affected by
heavy abstraction & has been drawn down way below the surface.
I defer immediately to your civil engineering expertise, but suspect
that even a truly water-tight lake of that proportion would suffer badly
from evaporation. If the lake leaks and is way above the surrounding
water table, then anything goes. Including the Wenyu River in this case.
The Chinese will certainly fix it, but at what cost?
Christopher Anton
> coach wrote:
>> The basic problem is the soil/rock from which the lake has been
>> excavated is porous. As far as I am aware they have attempted to
>> negate this with a giant size pond liner. Unfortunately, as anybody
>> who has had a go at landscape gardening may know, it is very difficult
>> to achieve a 100% seal. The resulting combination of leakage and
>> evaporation excedes the volume of water entering from the river and
>> thus the lake has dried out.
I'm having great problems locating the course as all the sites mentioning it
are very vague as to where it is. Is this it at
40.137, 116.6685
It looks like a huge building site in the latest Google Earth
Ewoud Dronkert
> I'm having great problems locating the course as all the sites mentioning
> it are very vague as to where it is. Is this it at 40.137, 116.6685
It's no. 7 in the top right corner of
http://www.beijing2008.cn/upload/cms_owrp2/column_en/venues_map.jpg so
that'll be: 40.185, 116.675. Zoom out to a height of 10 km to get an
overview of the complete course.
These are approx. the same view:
http://images.beijing-2008.org/20070512/Img214073836.jpg
http://www.xs4all.nl/~ewoud/rowing/beijing_rowing_course.kmz
(From http://en.beijing2008.cn/cptvenues/venues/)
--
E. Dronkert
Christopher Anton
"Ewoud Dronkert" <firs...@lastname.net.invalid> wrote in message
news:mh4bi39l93p2rdi3r...@4ax.com...
> Christopher Anton wrote:
>> I'm having great problems locating the course as all the sites mentioning
>> it are very vague as to where it is. Is this it at 40.137, 116.6685
>
> It's no. 7 in the top right corner of
> http://www.beijing2008.cn/upload/cms_owrp2/column_en/venues_map.jpg so
> that'll be: 40.185, 116.675. Zoom out to a height of 10 km to get an
> overview of the complete course.
Thanks Ewoud
I wasn't too far away then.