anybody know what went down in Montreal? looks like Mowat was the top seed after Day One. damn...

I am not surprised that Mowat was if that is true. Judging from how they did in Pickering they are a team to look out for. Heck they are even ranked by the authors of this site!

But wasn't Madawaska there? They usually are, would be very surprised if they lose to high schoolers. If they did, maybe the flatwater/dragon boater gap isn't really that big after all.

I had a feeling that Mowat would surprise some people at this one, and they did. In the Mixed final they just barely edged out the GTDBC Masters team by 0.07 seconds to take 2nd place, with Scotia in first.

I don't know what's up with the Scotia team this year. They just seem to creep up and snatch victory at the last moment. Pickering (1st), Tor Island (2nd), Montreal (1st). Too many top placings I think to be considered a fluke. Way to go Scotia!

Of course, every time they paddled this weekend I thought I heard "Getting by with a little help from my friends" playing in the background. But whatever, the core of the team was still pretty solidly Scotia.

Who won the men's race? I didn't bother watching this year. It was a severely depleted field, given that there was no money in it. Anyone catch that result?

Just got back from Montreal. Mowat DID have the fastest open(mixed) time of the first day (2:20 something). Second fastest was the GTDC Masters team(2:21 something).

That meant the fastest two times were posted by teams whose paddlers were all either under 20 and over 40.

But, in the photo finish final, the wiley Scotia team snuck through to take the overall title. Final results (top 3):
1)Scotia
2)Mowat
3)GTDC Masters
I believe all boats posted a 2:22 and change.

In the mens final (also a close one) it was 1)Philly DCH 2)Montreal Dragonslayers and 3)New York MAD

I am proud to be a Scarberian today. They have done our ghetto proud on the ice, on the mats, in AND on the water. For those of you who don't know, Mowat is a school from the mean streets of Scarborough :)

And they're a high school team! This is a prime example of what getting the youngins involved in the sport early.

WOW.

The race of the weekend in Montreal was without a doubt the Open Mixed Final. Eight boats dragon to dragon through the full 500 meters. The crowd went wild. Congratulations to everyone involved. And how about that gutsy Baycrest team and their fearless coach Scott Ford, sticking with it and finishing 8th only 1.7 seconds off the pace. Way to go Baycrest!!

Yes, the smell of testosterone cursing through teenage veins was apparent in Waterloo as well.

We weren't teenagers - all of us were at least 20

And my voice happened to crack MANY MANY years ago. I have chest hair if you look with a magnifying glass but nevertheless ITS STILL THERE.

>grumble< silly grownups..:)

in case anyone didn't figure, I meant JP. All those memories of old DALLAS episodes were getting to me.

I'm a Scotia Spitfire. After the open mixed final in Montreal we were first off the dock and lined up to greet the other crews in our race. The finish was so close that at that point, none of us knew who had won. We were just jazzed that it had been so close and exciting.
As they came off the dock, the Mowat paddlers stalked by, going out of their way to avoid us. Some of them even pushed away our congratulating hands as our calls of "Good race!" faded into shocked silence. Only a handful of their crew bothered to high 5, and only 1 or 2 with a semblance of sincerity. It was a blatant show of poor sportsmanship. Frankly, I was insulted by their petulance and a little embarassed both for them and their absent coach (who is a helluva sweet guy).
Yeah, I know "they're only in high school", but if they also want to compete in open category races and be respected just like us "grown-ups" (:P), they ought to display a little bit more of the community spirit that makes DB so much fun. Mowat is a great team and I look forward to having my ass whipped by these young future champs, but I think that the kids still have some growing up to do.

(Note that these are the opinions of a single paddling shmo, me, and do not reflect the opinions of the Scotia Spitfires team organization or its sponsors.)

The Disclaimer is hilarious...yet unfortunately necessary.

Congrats to the Spitfires for winning.

Question: Madawaska there?

Madawaska wasn't there...neither was Nortel (one of the stronger teams last year).

One thing I've found with Mowatt in both Pickering & Montreal, is that they lose control as soon as a race competitive. Their stroke rate is SO HIGH, that they get flustered and "spin those wheels"

Nope, Madawaska was not there. Nor was Cascades, or the Nortel Passport paddlers, or any other canoe club driven team.

The festival was, for the first time in years, ripe for the taking by a good Toronto crew. Unfortunately there weren't any there, so Scotia won instead. (heh, heh, just Kidding!)

Seriously, congrats Mike, and congrats to Scotia. It's about time one of us won that darn race.

Maybe next year the Bank teams should join forces for the men's division. BMO/CIBC/Scotia, could be nasty! What do you say Long Mike, Holubeshen?

was anybody else kinda disappointed that both the philly men's crew & the Days Inn mens crew were both no shows this year?...

it made the final men's race kinda anti-climatic, they are usually the 2 top mens crews at Montreal.

... is what we could call a banks mens crew in Montreal. The idea has crossed my mind more than once already. Throw together teams are always long odds horses to me, but me and mine would be cool wid dat, I'm sure. Of course, we'd have to call our combined womens crews "Acquisition"...

Sorry man. University types aren't teenagers. My mistake. Man, am I old. Anyway, I know how easy it was, and how hard it now is to recover from workouts and injury. You youngin's have discovered dragon boat. The party's over for us old folks.

that someone recognized that women participate in this sport as well. Yeah, I know a lot of teams have trouble getting enough women, but if you look at the women on CIBC, Scotia and BMO, and even Canada Life (for a price), I'm sure we could put together a seriously kick ass team. BTW, way to go Scotia, you looked sweet!

The Waterloo "A" division can attest to that. A total of 3 women's teams were in the top 10 and 1 was in the Grand Championship race.

BTW, Tempest, what do you mean "for a price"?

James, Mike..

CIBC would join up with your guys & girls in a heartbeat!

Hell James...you & me paddle together enough as it is...whats one more festival!

Don't worry, after their high school formal, the boys will be men and the girls women!

..right :)

I remember the days when I used to have this thing, what was it called? Oh yeah, a LIFE!

Anyone still able to recall life before paddling? I swear, every time I go out and blow a million brain cells paddling, then blow another million drinking, I lose a couple days worth of my childhood memories.

So what's one more festival? Oh, I don't know...

...grade 5?

Thanks very much for all the congratulations, everybody. I assure you that the secret of the Spitfires success has thus far evaded us too, but something seems to be working. :)

I'm often asked by non-paddlers if we dragonboaters win anything at regattas besides the coveted hardware. Mystified expressions greet my answer that we mostly seem to win entries to more regattas. Then I have to try and explain that what we want most (besides the hardware :) ) is the glory, the respect and admiration of our peers, the chance to stand on the podium and be a star. This is the real spirit of competition - winning well and losing well. I love it! Every time we all shake hands and say 'great race, congratulations', we push dragonboating another step towards the big time. That's cool. Thanks again for being great competitors!

Rob: I wasn't referring to dollars and cents. I was more referring to the strong sense of team that Canada Life seems to have. Their team effort goes beyond just getting in the boat for practice and I think that's what is very important and probably missing from a lot of teams. The price that would have to be paid for having/wanting Canada Life women to be a part of a joint team is that they may not get to devote their time to the mixed crew as they have, and the joint team would lose out on building the team cohesiveness. Of course this would hold for any team, but CL is really hot right now.

Two years ago my team was competing at the Montreal festival. A bunch of us got there late, and our team had no choice but to go out on the water with 14 paddlers. Of course we came in dead last, but we won the repechage later in the day, and should have advanced to the semis. Later, though, we found out our first race was a DQ because we didn't have 16 paddlers, and therefore our repechage was actually "an exhibition" race, technically taking us out of the competition. They even had the gall to change our time in the official results, so it looked like we didn't win our race.
Now looking at the rulebook on their website, it says that you have to have a minimum of 16 paddlers.

But it also states that: "12. Races or heats will not be held for teams who arrive late. They will receive no time but will be allowed to race in Saturday afternoon’s race."

So in retrospect, if our team decided not to get on the water at all, we would've still been in contention, but because they chose to get out there and paddle without a full crew, they were disqualified? It just seems totally bogus to me.

And looking at this year's saturday results, Mercedes DQ'd out of their prelim heat. Can anyone tell me if this was because they didn't show, or any other reason? Either way, they were given a DQ, yet they were allowed to compete in the repechage in the afternoon.

So I'm just wondering about the disparity in their rules, and opinions on their logic.

They weren't wearing lifejackets, and their boat didn't have a number on it. I don't really understand how they got a boat with no number on it, or how that's their fault, (maybe someone else could shed some light?) but the lifejackets were clearly something that was madatory throughout all races.

I wasn't there but my team informs me we were DQ for not having enough men in the boat. They were half way out and they stopped them to do a count. They were told either the cox paddled and a girl steered or they would be DQ but they couldn't go back to get a male paddler. I have no idea why all of these DQ's were not caught at the loading area, and it is pretty shitty to be DQ'd for that on the first day after travelling and paying all that money. We have to obviously take some of the blame, but with all these Dq's for stuff that should have been caught at the loading area I think it should have been a bit more organized. I have been informed that Mercedes protested, rightly so about the boat although I don't see how they could have won the life jacket issue. We spoke with someone but there was no way to win our appeal. Ended up in E division, which is kinda shitty for those boats as we won in a division we should not have been in. We came second in the heat we were DQ'd with.

Well Paul,

Some festivals have the minimum 8 female rule, and some (like montreal) have the minimum 8 of any sex rule. Looks like you guys got the bad end of the deal. Montreal always have this tendency to catch these apparent infractions when it's too late to do anything about it. Either, like in your case, they inform you near the line, when it's too late to do anything about it, or they'll just tell you you're DQ'd after the race is over. You've got to give kudos to TIDBRF, where everything is okayed before you get on the water.

On the slightly brighter side, at least they did stick you in the E division, whereas for us, they wouldn't even let us compete, putting us only into exhibition races. We were so disgusted that we didn't bother showing up on Sunday.

Well Paul,

Some festivals have the minimum 8 female rule, and some (like montreal) have the minimum 8 of any sex rule. Looks like you guys got the bad end of the deal. Montreal always have this tendency to catch these apparent infractions when it's too late to do anything about it. Either, like in your case, they inform you near the line, when it's too late to do anything about it, or they'll just tell you you're DQ'd after the race is over. You've got to give kudos to TIDBRF, where everything is okayed before you get on the water.

On the slightly brighter side, at least they did stick you in the E division, whereas for us, they wouldn't even let us compete, putting us only into exhibition races. We were so disgusted that we didn't bother showing up on Sunday.

That is almost criminal in my opinion. I know it is our responsibility to read rules, but one would figure there should be standards that are adhered to. Standards seem to be a problem this year. When your a team that travels all that distance giving up time, money and in some cases vacation days these festivals should be a little more on the ball. I was under the beleif that these events should be about competeing and having fun, getting disqualified over unique rules or for something that could have been caught at the loading bay is discouraging to say the least. Hope you went out Saturday and enjoyed Montreal, truly Canada's great party city.

JP - at the post-race ceremonies in Waterloo, word around the campfire was that a few of us Piranhas were too young to even enter the beer tent, so don't fret =)

re: Mowat

too bad hearing about the montreal stuff. i was talking with some guys on Mowat before their token Media race at the Island (they had applied late due to the strike and were withheld from the competition even though they were supposed to have been granted a free entry for winning the previous year), and they seemed to be a pretty down-to-earth bunch. they'll learn.

speaking of handshaking, though, that iS the tradition, eh? i mean, all the corporate teams seem to be that spirit. i think it was after the banker's cup final at the Island, there they were, all six teams forming one mammoth line, all whooping it up and congratulating each other. meanwhile after our community final, it was just the osler team standing around so we just ran into their line, with some baycrest guys coming along afterwards. and then after the waterloo final the docking area was deserted by the time we got in, and we had to blatantly initiate it just to high-five victoria college. i mean, i'm giving the benefit of the doubt that some squads aren't necessarily cognizant of this procedure (the Osler guys were initially really surprised to see us coming down their way), but it's just positive to engender goodwill after the day is done. anyway, there were a lot of really friendly teams there...the Scream'n Demons were extremely gracious afterwards, yukking it up and revelling in the festivities as much as we did (glad to see they got to pick up some hardware as well), and other teams like the Stratford Maidens, University College, and Dilligaff were also great sports about everything.

http://www.montrealdragonboat.com/documents/finalresults_2001.pdf

Interesting, our BMO InvestorLine crew got moved up to 2nd in the "B" final. We were initially placed 3rd.

It was an incredibly tight race, with all teams coming in at 2:27 and change. Not even a second separated 1st from 6th. Now that's racing!

Exciting, even if it was 5 seconds or so off the pace of the "A" division.

But I think the story of the day was Mercedes, going from a near disqualification in their first race, battling back through the repechage and semi-final to finish a solid 5th in the "A" final. Never say die.

Isn't it funny how the Montreal organizers seem to bend every single rule to their liking?...They change results to suit themselves, (which I always find funny).

In BMO & the BOD squad's first race on Saturday, they switched the times of the boats 3 times!! (If you say the sheet, you wouldn't have believed all the pencil marks they had on it!)

And now in the B final, they have the team that finished 2nd, moved down to 6th??? How does that make sense?...This isn't just sour grapes....one of the BOD Squad members was in the timing tower filming the race, and the BOD Squad clearly finishes 2nd (believe me, I've watched the video ad-naseum.

So it was BOD that came in 2nd? No big deal for us, we'll take 2nd or 3rd, the race was so tight anyhow.

But I too would take offense if my 2nd place finish was dropped to 6th. That's harsh.

You know, there's always something a little weird about that Montreal race. Something ALWAYS happens. It's like the Bermuda Triangle of dragon boating. Sometimes your times, or even your places, just disappear. Last year, our team was going to get dropped to the "Z" division (whatever) because they had neglected to give us a time in the repechage. Someone drops their stopwatch, and we get bumped into oblivion? C'mon! We had to launch an official protest just to get back in the game. This year we had no such problems, but that's just the luck of the draw. Look what happened to Mercedes, Komodo, and now BOD Squad.

I mean, I have some sympathy for the race organizers and some of the better officials among the staff, but for crying out loud guys, get it right!

My advice; go to Montreal for the party and don't take the racing too seriously. It'll just break your heart.

The Monks and DILLIGAFF were great sports as well in Waterloo high fiving after races and many hanging around for the awards cerimony.

They of course were not the only ones, but as we had continued direct contact with them all day (We raced the Monks three times) they stood out.

Cheers

Its funny looking back on what this forum used to be, and what it has now become.

So sad.

bored much?

But, in the photo finish final, the wiley Scotia team snuck through to take the overall title. Final results (top 3):
1)Scotia
2)Mowat
3)GTDC Masters
I believe all boats posted a 2:22 and change.


Just amazing how the old boats used to chug along. 2:22 and change in more recent times with the newer boats are now F-division times.

I was wondering about the difference in times. The sport has come a long way.

Going back 2001??
You got way too much time on your hands. Get a life.

If you want to be even more impressed look at the times of the Men's final A back then. Days Inn and most Men's team clocked in around 2 Minutes flat in those heavy boats. The Men's team calibre must have dropped off quite a bit since 2 minutes even is still the bench mark time for a championship men's team.
We need Tom Milway and the rest of those guys to come back and race in a SMR boat to show a fast boat should go

If there were times posted for 1993 you would see a boat coached by Mr. John Hollins doing less then 1:50. Times used to be faster, but then again water levels were alot better on the Island over a decade ago.

Its tough to compare basin times to Island times BUT you are right that the Island times were much faster in the early 90's than they are today. Its all to do with water level not the calibre of the teams.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

In 1993, they weren't doing 500m.
So I'd b suprised if anyone broke 2:40 at the Island.

"Going back 2001??
You got way too much time on your hands. Get a life."

.. yet you responded

Over all it seems while fitness levels and the calibre of paddling is supposed to be better why have times not dramatically improved ?

Was it still 640m back in '93?