2010 Gallop of the Dragons

Way to take home the Bronze in the Expat Challenge at the Gallop of the Dragons race yesterday.  This confirms we are one of the top three expat teams in the country.  We continue to demonstrate our competitiveness, organization, and effectiveness, and the reasons for us to be proud of our accomplishments continue to roll in! (see "More" to read the entire article and see the videos!)

Even though individual medals were presented at our post race party at the Fullerton Boathouse, the win is that of the whole team’s – whether we were in that specific boat or not.  So once again, well done, team! 

We entered six boats.  All boats raced more than once on Saturday, three made it to the semi-finals on Sunday, and we competed in about 15 races total. 

Some highlights:

• Our men’s team landed 5^th of 24 teams, and was a horse hair away from advancing to the final.
• Our Inter-Club Red landed 13^th of 64 teams.  Each time this boat of 6 paddling males and 4 paddling females raced, all the competition had 10 men paddling in their boats.
• The times for our Expat Challenge final were:
  • Australians, 45:18
  • Germans, 45:32
  • Americans, 45:40

As Dick Vitale would say, "Let's cut to the video tape!"

From the Finish Line - to see the video you have to click on "View Details" once the image pops up:

We also survived a hard collision during the Expat semi-final, stayed upright and proceeded to place first in that semi when the race was re-raced.  You have to see this, too:

Side View:

For a little while on Saturday it almost felt like a NASCAR race what with 3 out of the first 6 races ending with at least one, if not two boats colliding, complete with spinouts, capsizes, and lots of tears for the teams finding themselves swimming in the (still not clean enough) Singapore River.

As usual, we had a fantastic time at our post race party, with food, drink, medals and video of the races. 

Finally, a big THANK YOU to everyone who pitched in before, during and after race weekend.  We are indebted to all the enthusiastic team members who make these events so awesome, and we continue to manage to make things happen smoothly, while both being competitive and having a lot of fun together.

Now is a good time to have new paddlers come out, in preparation of our next big race in July.

We have a lot happening – time trials, fitness tests, American Dragons hats (*new*), the Dragon Divas (June 12), new drinking shirts are being designed, a number of social events, recruiting, oh, and the men are preparing themselves to sport mohawks or their best Daddy Warbucks haircuts and goatees at the Singapore Dragon Boat Festival!  :-)

But wait...there's MORE!  Check out photos from Allen Allarey: