Congratulations Crew Yahoo!

for racing an incredible final and capturing the Silver medal in the A Division this past weekend.

Also to the Red Angels (combination of Yahoo Angels & Red Eye Paddling Club women) for the GOLD medal in the Women's divison.

What an awesome weekend of fun, food, & racing with great friends. Detailed Write-up about the festival to follow. (& look out for some pics of the event in the photo gallery to be posted soon)

If you have some photos you want to share & posted on the website, please send them to James - This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Write Up - Written by Carol Birk; Edited by Karen Luk

Lethbridge was a beautiful beginning to the Dragonboat racing season. The weather couldn't have been better and as always, Lethbridge put on a fun, well run, no stress festival. They really know how to do it right. Good food, decent entertainment, friendly volunteers and races that ran on time, some even a little ahead of time. 

And then there were the races. Our mixed team started off early on Saturday morning with the first race of the festival at 8:00am! It was a pretty sluggish race that we weren’t too proud of. With a time of 2:24:24 we were ranked 3rd in the morning races. The women's boat was up next. It was a little bit wonky but what can you expect of a crew made up of half Angel's and half Red Eyes who had only practiced together once. Not to mention that there were a number of newbies from both teams for whom this was their first season of Dragon boating. Still, they came in with a time of 2:49 beating a lot of the mixed team times and placed 3rd amongst the women’s division.

After Kelvin & Jeremy’s “talk” & giving us the hammer down, both teams raced a better race in the afternoon even though there was a head wind. The Red Angels remained 3rd overall in the women's division and landed themselves in the Women’s Semi Finals for Sunday. And Crew Yahoo ranked 4th overall and found themselves in the Mixed A Semi Finals.

After the races on Saturday, the entire team attended the team dinner at Miro Bistro. Everyone was well fed & fueled up with some good food.

Sunday morning allowed a bit of a sleep in and the Red Angels were beginning to gel as a team. They had a good race, coming in first place in their heat. For Crew Yahoo, the semi finals meant the top 5 times from both Semi finals heats gets to advance. So the pressure was on. The top seeded teams were less than 1 second from each other's times after Saturday's heats. Crew Yahoo stuck to their race plan & once again won their race, allowing Jacek and Kevin (our new members) to brag that they had won every race they were in. Since Crew Yahoo was in the second round of the Semi A finals, after hearing our times, we knew we made it into the A division finals. But it was getting more intense as the seeding put both teams up against more competitive boats.

And then came the final races. Happy Hour Remax might have had a bit of an edge at the starting line, having nosed themselves ahead. The ladies had a great start and were out in front. They kept a good pace but the finish was pretty intense. Happy Hour was putting in a good finish but the Red Angels dug in and won the race beating Happy Hour by only 00:00.6 seconds and out pacing 3rd place by a full 8.6 seconds! What a race!

The final race for Crew Yahoo was up against Para Huti Huti, an Edmonton team trying out for the Nationals. We knew PHH would be tough competition. We flew off the start and never let up. Although PHH ultimately won the race with a time of 2:10:3, we came in 2nd with a time of 2:16:8 and 3rd place was a distant 2:32:0. (another Edmonton Team that was trying out for Nationals.)

Congratulations to the men & women of both teams bringing home some hardware!

It was a gratifying weekend for both teams coming home with some bling around their necks. Hopefully this means an omen of things to come.