Since the formation of Typhoon Tigers in 2003 only one competition lay yet to be claimed by the typhoon tigers...  It seems fitting that the one competition that has yet to be won was the first competition that Typhoon Tigers was specially formed to enter way back in 2003.

Since the formation of Typhoon Tigers in 2003 only one competition lay yet to be claimed by the typhoon tigers...  It seems fitting that the one competition that has yet to be won was the first competition that Typhoon Tigers was specially formed to enter way back in 2003. Always out of grasp, always 2nd, 3rd place both teams had something to prove this year...

Hurricane Tigers was there to avenge their defeat last year, only narrowly missing out on first place by less than a second. This year it was almost brand new crew, how would they fare against the other 44 teams that had entered?

On the other hand Typhoon Tigers only had one main competitors, the only other chinese premiership team based in London, Raging Dragons, the thorn to the side of the tigers for the past 2 years.... preventing us each time from lifting the trophy since the departure of Braveheart (mixed crew composed of Kingston and Thames).

The list of teams were impressive!! 44 teams, each with 16 or more paddlers per team... It was to our surprise that the event organisers allowed substitutes to those teams that had lower numbers than others, and these substitutes came from the reserves of professional paddlers... Surely a marketing and promotion ploy on their part.

The competition was comprised of the usual format, 3 heats, per team, in other words three chances to get the top 8 times to make it into the major finals of the Open Competition whilst the runners and riders for the Club Competition was already decided. As expected the format of the races meant that there was a lot of waiting around and there was much to do as there were drinks and food stalls littered all around the venue.

Typhoon played a tactical game, mixing up the crews for the first 2 heats so that all members of the team would get a chance to race, although things didn't go to plan... There was two incident of boats capsizing and also the two Invitation Cups which meant that the event itself was overrunning by a hour... and we were told that we had to do the Club Team Finals immediately... This meant that we only raced two heats whilst other teams had raced all three of theirs... The only reason why we had agreed to this was because we presumed that after our race the Open Cup Final would take place, but this was not the case...

The selected team members in the finals was completely different to that of the previous heats... some never had a chance to race all day whilst other were racing with other teams. It was only now that we were together as one team, no time to practice, people in different seating positions, we just had enough time to paddle to the start line...

We learnt our lesson last year, we were ready for the start calls. We were off!!! The boat rocked side to side as members of the team adjusted to the lighter boat and we powered through our 30 start strokes but to our surprise our opponent had kept up head-to-head with us...

It was a battle for the finish all the way to the 100m mark... it was then that the other team started to edge that little bit more and panic started to set in within our boat...

Strokes shorten and the pace was pushed on towards the finishing line... Not a pretty sight... We finised up 1/3 of a boat behind the winner, our finish wasnt there... they were the better team on the day... who knows what would have happened if we had our 3rd heat...

The Open Competition was more of a spectacular event, eight teams lining up, within the line up it was Accenture (trained by us), Hurricane Tigers, Yi-Ban, surely one of these team would walk away with 1st place?

Once again the wind condition proved costly to Hurricane Tigers, after being told to move back the start was immediately called forcing them to start with half the boat unprepared... This was costly as in close water racing the only way to get ahead of the pack was to be clear of them. It was an exciting race! All 8 boat was head to head of one another, nobody could tell who had taken 1st unless they were standing on the finishing lines... Alas it was all too clear that Hurricane didnt get 1st place, who would it be?

At the prize giving people were waiting with expectation on their faces for the Open Cup results, but first it was the Club Teams results...

"And the Winner with the fastest time of the day, Typhoon Tigers...."

Stunned silence, muffled voices, no cheers or celebrations from either side. We all knew that a mistake had been made... a representative from each team approached the PA to talk about the results and it seems that because Typhoon had chosen another boat the PA had the times mixed up and awarded us the cup by mistake. Luckily nobody from Typhoon had come up to collect the trophy otherwise they would surely have been redfaced... RD rightly picked up the trophy whilst Typhoon was rewarded 2nd place with nothing to show for it.

The Open Results was more of a debatable one... It seems that Neumann Magic was awarded 1st place... with Yi-ban on closely on their tail. However... it seems that Neuman Magic had 4 professional paddlers pacing at the front of the boat and Yi-Ban was arguing that fact... However the results didnt change and remained the same. Final results for Accenture was 5th place whilst Hurricane came in at 6th...

Overall it was a brilliant day of racing, probably one of the only sunny day of summer, the Tigers family decided to lick their wounds to eat and sing sad depressing songs at Royal China...