With a bunch of different festival having different rules, and different enforcement of said rules, what is the best way to run a 2K.

I like:
1. Make the turns wide so that each crew should be able to make turn in a perfect arc.
2. Inside track should always be yielded to overtaking boats, at any point in the race.
3. If the overtaking boat is judged to go off this track and collide with another boat, and they were given sufficient room, they get the penalty.
4. If the boat being overtaken squeezes them out they get the penalty.

This seems pretty simple and obvious to me but most festival have some different weird rules. It's also pretty fair as the boat being overtaken gets to ride wash if they can, but the overtaking boat has a shorter race and will make up speed on the turns.

I beg to differ. The 2k should be a no rules, full contact, grudge match race to the finish.

...that the hammerheads should get a 1 hour head start on...

OP: BORING rules.

Let's do it like they did in Rome 2002: use a four-lane course with nearby seawalls, causing tons of wave action. Watch many boats collide and/or sink. Doesn't get better than that!

Yes, memories of Rome 2002 and the Collideseum! The Russian dragonboat became a submarine at the finish! Wonder if we can see Schtorrm rise from the deep again...!

Here's what it looked like just before the finish line.

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I've never seen that picture before... I would have loved to be involved in that race. Thanks for sharing it.

That has to be the best dragon boat photo I've ever seen.

I was lucky enough to be in that race, yet the photo was taken with my camera. I handed my camera to another teammate who was sitting out that particular race and I asked him to take photos of anything he thought looked interesting. He nailed this classic photo!

We will likely never see a photo like that again: seven boats approaching the finish line at the same time in just two lanes. I believe that the 2002 Rome 2000-meter race was the IDBF's first ever. So it was an experiment at the time.

There were 10 boats in the race, leaving 10 seconds apart. The race got interesting because the race course was very narrow: only four lanes were used during the shorter, straight-line races. So the turns were incredibly tight. During the race, it was clear that some of the teams had never practiced making such a tight turn at racing speeds, with the biggest blunder occurring when three boats all hit the same turn simulataneously. The result: the inside boat bounced into the middle boat, which bounced into the outside boat. This action caused the outside boat to crash into the sea wall, with the middle boat then hitting the outside boat and the inside boat then hitting the middle boat. Unbelieveable! It all happened right in front of our boat, too.

To make matters nuttier, the race course was surrounded by vertical walls. The result was an amazing amount of wave action (for a dragon boat race), caused by 10 boats all moving in opposing directions on such a tight course. Water poured over the sides of everyone's boats, and the team with the heaviest paddlers -- the Russians -- had their boat sink just before the finish line. I believe two other boats sank just past the finish line, too. Likely, those two boats have the teams that are wearing black shirts in the photo, since both are plowing through an incredible bow wave.

Also, keep in mind that the Russians sank well ahead of the other six boats. So not only did the Russians sink just before the finish line, they then had to contend with six boats approaching them in just two lanes. Fortunately, all six boats avoided the Russians. No one was hurt in that race, as far as I know.

Ironically, there was a second 2000-meter race immediately after, and it went off without any incidents because none of the boats passed any of the others. Likely, they realized that they had to slow down the boats in the tight turns, too. I believe the races were not seeded, so the first race turned out to have a lot of the slower teams start ahead of the faster teams -- leading to the three-boat crash on the second turn.

Since 2002, the IDBF has adjusted the rules to avoid such incidents.

Hey TL, I was there too and you're mostly right on the facts, except one. The races were seeded, with the slowest boats out first and the faster boats out last. This contributes to passing opportunities, and resultant mayhem. One team, Pickering, even chose to deliberately start early, presumably in order to grab some early wash and/or avoid being overtaken themselves.

Another factor in the boats sinking were the boats themselves. These things were junk! They were very balance sensitive from bow to stern, so it was easy to set them up bow-heavy and plow through the water. Take a bow-heavy boat, add lots of side wash, tipping through turns, splashing, etc, and even the boats that were still afloat at the end were full of water.

But despite the carnage of that first race, and a number of incidents in other races, the 2000m turning race was the big hit of the regatta. No one could stop talking about it, and now 2000m turning races are a staple of IDBF races and other regattas around the world.

And that picture is absolutely incredible! A classic for the sport.

Thanks for clearing that up! Now that you mention it, you're 100% right. The slowest teams did start first, which was just a recipe for mayhem (and fun!). Isn't it the opposite now, with the fastest teams starting first?

No as it stands currently slowest teams start first. This gives everyone a target and something to push forwards towards.

Lets not forget to mention.

Watch out for the water fountain!!!

Yes! The water fountains were in between Lanes 2 and 3. They weren't functioning (thankfully), but you can see one in the photo; it's between the steerers of the two boats to the far left.

Water fountain?! I thought that was the Trevi Fountain?!

The slowest teams should start first as this is similar to a "pursuit race" and if seeded correctly should all finish at the same time (handicapped properly). CC's in Toronto also had a poorly designed course for this type of race.

"CC's in Toronto also had a poorly designed course for this type of race."

The "Rockpile" in Toronto is easily twice, if not three times as wide as the course in Eur (Rome) was. Aside from putting kids-bowling style bumpers around the racecourse, what would you have liked them to do?

If I had one complaint is was that they could have moved the 2000m race course closer to the shore side. This way the teams could have been a little farther from the rocks during two of the turns.

Other than that, no real issues, IMO.

Ah, 2K racing. The harrowing beauty of it. Gotta' love it! Great photo. Since '02 IDBF has indeed tightened up the rules. Makes it safer, but less spectacular. Still, there's always some bumps and close turns and it's a great showcase for the helm's abilities.