I was wondering, if the dragonboat festivals would consider rewriting the rules a little.

That is, instead of saying a MINIMUM of 8 girls, to have it a MAXIMUM of 12 guys. The problem is for crews that cannot have their full roster show up.

We had 12 guys and 4 girls show up to one festival. This festival did not allow us to "borrow" extra help from around us.

In the end, we were not sure if we were allowed to race at all as we only had 4 girls. One organizer told us we couldn't go on board until we had 8 girls, another told us we coudln't borrow anyone else who wasn't on our team. I thought that was ridiculous.

Now if we had 8 girls and 8 guys, that would not be an issue we could race with 16 people on the boat. However, to say miniumum 8 girls, it would mean we could not race with the 16 people who showed up. Unless the empty seats could count for a "girl"

In the end, we did race with only 16 and all was well.

However, to avoid technicalities with such wording, perhaps saying a "maximum of 12 guys" would be better than "miniumum of 8 girls".

Agreed. That makes alot of sense.

What part of minimum of 8 women not understood? All 'Mixed' races are raced in this composition with some rare case that the 'Mixed' is a 50/50 composition.

It's a shame that a crew showing up without 8 female paddlers may not be able to race, but that is not the organizer's fault but the fault of your crew's manager/captain for not reading.

If it's just festival racing, then why not ask the organizer, pretty please and if it's not too much trouble and won't interfere with the racing plan, if you can switch to the open class where there is no male female specification?

I'm assuming the above poster is not Canadian. Festivals in Canada are all mixed racing. Very few, if any, offer open categories.

so the question you are posing is, what is better, a woman, or an empty seat.

There is sound reasoning behind the 8-women-minimum rule. Suppose you had 12 guys and 8 women, but two of your women were really, really horrible. Your boat would actually be faster with only 6 women and 12 guys -- but then, your boat wouldn't be as much of a "mixed" boat with a 2:1 ratio of men/women. The idea of the rule is to assure that the boat is actually "Mixed".

And frankly, I believe that by allowing a minimum of 8 women instead of a minimum of 10, the rule is already quite generous.

So what some people here are saying .. is .. having guys is good and ok .. but having women might be worse than an empty seat?

Are we showing disrespect to women here?

It's funny, you can have a similar argument about an all-men's crew, so it isn't unique to women. "Can a boat be faster with 18 paddlers?" With the old lego boats in Montreal, maybe. But in new boats like BUK and SRS? I don't think so. More paddlers = faster boat, unless they really, REALLY suck.

Back on topic, I think the rule should stand at minimum 8 female paddlers on a mixed team. If you can't scare up 8 women to paddle in your boat, then you shouldn't be racing in the mixed class. Sorry, but there has to be a line drawn somewhere.

And besides, the rule really ought to be 10&10 for a mixed team. But not just when one rogue festival decides to change. The rule change (or recommendation) should come down from the IDBF. But that got shot down a couple of years ago, so we're stuck at 12&8(min) for now.

"So what some people here are saying .. is .. having guys is good and ok .. but having women might be worse than an empty seat? Are we showing disrespect to women here?"

Didn't we just know that someone would take something in this thread the wrong way??

The rule is simple: "minimum of 8 women", NOT "maximum of 12 men". This assures something close to a 50-50 split.

Does no one think that you're still at a disadvantage if you are missing a female paddler?

This topic ie reverting to a similiar thread - overweight paddlers... adding someone for the sake of meeting the minimum gender requirements can hurt you as well... if they are overweight, out of shape and out of sync, doesn't matter if it is female of male, better off not having them on the boat.

if this refers to the race i am pretty sure it does. here's my take.

team had to pick up 4 women to meet rules, they did.

race two they dropped the 4 pick ups and dropped 6 seconds off first race time.( yes yes blah blah different conditions and teams but it wasn't)

i agree with the 8-12 rule ...mostly because my team has never had a problem getting women out.

i believe most festivals will let you race, and win with down to 16 bodies but in order to win most places you need the 8 women.

To clarify, if you read the racebooks carefully, the rules generally don't specify gender, they merely state that a minimum of 8 paddlers of each gender are required to be in the boat during the race. In theory, a mixed team could therefore race with 12 women and 8 men as well, although most prefer to race with 12 men and 8 women.

I've paddled with 12 women and 8 men and we beat another team with 12 men and 8 women. I've paddled on an all women's team that beat a mixed team. I have also seen an all women's team beat an all men's team. So there! Hooray women!

"I've paddled with 12 women and 8 men and we beat another team with 12 men and 8 women. I've paddled on an all women's team that beat a mixed team. I have also seen an all women's team beat an all men's team. So there! "

Great logic.

As we all know, there are plenty of fat, out-of-shape men in dragon boating. Any competive women's team could beat a team of male lard-asses.

But never forget that there's a reason why there are MEN'S teams and WOMEN's teams instead of just "teams"! If you really want equality, petition the IDBF to get rid of the gender-specific divisions and make dragon boating like horse show jumping, where the riders are of both sexes.

"Any competive women's team could beat a team of male lard-asses."

No matter how lard-y their asses, that is actually a very rare situation.

The Crewsers at the top of their game are capable of being competitive, but not dominant, among a mid-level field of mixed teams. (they tried this at Summer Sensation and GWN one year, to various degrees of success). FCRCC could also probably beat a lot of mixed teams, and a few men's teams as well.

But all-women's teams beating all-mens teams, that is very rare. Oh, I'm sure it can happen. Assemble a team of stumble-bums, put them in a boat for one or two practices (compared to the dozens of practices that Crewsers or FCRCC do as a crew) and I'm sure you can manufacture the situation you're talking about.

But be serious and realistic for a second before you compare a national team level crew to a bunch of "lard asses". Most club-crew level women's teams get demolished by club crew level men's teams.

Can you debate that?

Maybe you can, but why bother? It's meaningless.

I seem to remember the SRS women doing relatively well at GWN a couple of years ago.

Regardless, all things considered equal, women just dont have the power men have to get the dragon boat up out of the water.

At one race, to fulfil the requirements, we had to pick up these "volunteers".

They were HUGE women who had never paddled before in their lives. That dramatically slowed our boat down.

Yet another race, we picked up some people for help who were only recreational paddlers who at least had some clue how to paddle and that at least kept us ok.

Perhaps a bit of a departure from the issue here, but.....we were once caught on the way to the start with an ineligible paddler in our boat. We were given the option of allowing him to paddle and being DQ'd, or having him leave the boat before we raced and not being DQ'd. Not much of a choice, of course! So the issue was: do we get rid of the ineligible paddler and compete with an odd number of people, or do we rid of the ineligible paddler AND another paddler in order to keep an even number of paddlers? Some people thought we should only get rid of one person and thus maintain as much power as possible, while others thought we should get rid of two people and thus keep the boat balanced, etc.

Thoughts?

Play with the cox and drummer leaning on a side, paddlers leaning away from the gunwale

Move the heavier guys on the heavy side of the boat towards the front and back where they have less influence on the boat balance. Drummer and steersperson both have to shift their weight to the light side. The boat will still wobble at catch, this is unavoidable, but you still have more power with 19 paddlers than 18 (assuming paddler #19 was worth keeping at all).

As for jamming butt pads or shoes or whatever between the people on the heavy side and the side of the boat, this never seems to work. Nor does telling people on the heavy side to shift in towards the middle of the boat. They will wind up against the side anyhow.