Burma’s Traditional Boat Race team is working hard to be ready to defend its gold medals at the upcoming 28th Southeast Asian Games (SEA Games).

Team members have been preparing for the Traditional Boat Race (TBR), also known as the Dragon Boat race, by doing strenuous exercises and holding vigourous practice sessions as they prepare for the games to be held in Singapore from 5-26 June.

Myanmar’s TBR team aims to get all eight gold medals in Singapore, four in the men’s category, and four in the women’s.

A clean sweep would be a record, despite Burma’s team winning 12 of the 15 gold medals when the Dragon Boat races were held at the last SEA Games, in Naypyidaw in 2013.

Team members feel they have good reason to be optimistic about their medal chances.

“We have changed rowers systematically and are doing systematic exercise harder than last year. That’s why we can say that we hope for gold medals in Traditional Boat Race,” said Myanmar’s TBR coach Win Pe.

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“I would like to say that we are going to take gold medal in Singapore SEA Games as we are trying our best.” said rower Saw Maung.

Saw Maung said the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia will be the biggest challengers for them.

According to the Ministry of Sport, Myanmar aims to get 50 gold medals overall in the 28th SEA Games.

They aimed for 100 gold medals in the 27th SEA Games which were held in 2013 in Burma, officially known as Myanmar, but they had to settle for 86 golds out of 233 medals overall. That was second to Thailand, which took home 107 golds among its 282-medal haul.