A new year means a new dragonboating season. New teams are formed whilst old ones are disband, it was great to see that after today’s performance TAO Dragons - a new team formed out of members from Bristol Empires and Wraysbury Dragons - are definitely one name to look out for this season.

The day begin with no expectation, we were undoubtedly a fresh new team, some members only racing for the first time. We all didn’t know what to expect but we definitely wanted to see what the results of all the Winter Training was. With a total of 20 teams, it appears that all the Premier Teams managed to make the first event along with a few Standard Teams and two Scratch Crews.

The Sun decided to show it face and the fierce chilly winds that has been blowing around London has calm along with the muted sound of airplanes taking off as they were all grounded due to the Icelandic Volcano Ash.

It was an 8am start and we all arrived to the docks to place our boats on the waters and to dress them ready for battle. We knew that we were in the first 200m heat so had to ensure that everyone was warmed up correctly and on the boat promptly before the race.

200m Combined

In the first Heat we were facing the 2009 winners of the Premier League and Cool Runnings who are now in their 2nd year as a Premier League, both teams have proven their experience in previous years, it was now time for us to see what we could do with our bunch of fresh paddlers.

As all three boats lined up ready to race, nervous tension could be felt as we were the first race of the day and all eyes were on us. On the command “Attention”, “Go”!!! it was a rush of adrenaline, each stroke bringing the boat up to full speed and after our 30 strokes start it appears that we had beaten Amathus and were ahead of them, into the length we continued with our pace but Amathus seems to have another gear which they used in the last 100m and began to pull ahead of us. Once we crossed the finish line we knew that we didn’t win but it a close one with the Number 1 team in the country.

Amathus (48:44), Typhoon (49:64), Cool Runnings (53:94)

200m Cup Semi

Our time in the first heat ensured that we were the 2nd fastest runner ups, with the three fastest runners up skipping the reps to make it straight to the Cup Semi finals. We had a bit of a rest before facing our favourite boys in blue, Batchworth in the Cup Semi. We all knew what we had to do, just attack the first stroke hard and keep it long and powerful, we knew that we had the start as we proved that against Amathus, but we now needed the same start but apply more power and reach into the lengths. On the starting line we knew what we had to do, even though half the people on the Batchworth boat were former Typhoons we had show them the Typhoon of present. On the starting line we were lined up with the newly formed TAO Dragons and knew that we had to beat them as well to try and fight for the fastest runner up spot and make it to the Major Cup Finals.

Our start was good!!! But as the race continued down the line the other teams managed to maintain their speed whilst we slightly dropped behind and had to be content with 3rd place. During the warm up we received our times and it seems that we got an amazing 43:46 seconds, almost 6 seconds faster than our first time. However this was a short celebration as it seems that the starters forgot to start their watches so all the team in this heat was added 6 seconds...

Batchworth (47:17), TAO Dragons (48:42), Typhoon (49:46), Raging Bull (54:70)

200m Minor Finals

This turned out to be a battle of the London Teams, with three of the four teams in the Minor Finals, were teams that trained at the Royal Albert Docks. If anything this was for pride, we had qualified with the fastest time of all the teams and had the seeded lane 2, however the other teams were only micro-seconds behind. That how tough dragonboat racing is, races can be decided by micro-seconds...

Our start this time around wasn’t as good as our previous races, RD pulled ahead of us and kept that lead whilst the other teams had that little bit more as well. We came 4th place but with our fastest 200m time of the day.

Raging Dragons (47:31), Thames Taniwas (48:00), BA Hurricanes (48:28), Typhoon (49:14)

500m Combined

There wasn’t that much time before the 500m race and we were facing Batchworth again... We were so eager to get to the start line that we were there 25 minutes before the race, once all the boats were lined up, we were ready for the first 500m race of the season. It was a quick start and we managed to keep up with Batchworth up until the 250m mark, but that was when their experience and power showed, they just started to pull further and further away. We had to be content with 2nd place but not fast enough to miss the reps...

Batchworth (2:04:39), Typhoon (2:13:16), Notts Anaconda (2:17:35), Worcester Dragonflies (2:29:43)

Funnies

In a moment of passion, after the team talk was said and done, the Captain asked if there was anything else to say? One person stepped forwards and said a statement with conviction and clarity "Iz should always be in the boat, at all times"...

500m Rep

It seems that we had no time to rest, we were to race in the first 500m rep, we were facing Notts Anaconda again and Kingston Pretenders. We thought that we would have it easy as we beat them by 4 seconds in the previous race but were we wrong! Since Kingston Pretenders were late to the start, it turned out to be a two boat race. From the start we took the lead, however Notts began to crawl back and back until it was head to head, it was only in the last 50m when we did the finish that we managed to secure our victory, but only 1/10 of a second separated both of our boats.

Typhoon (2:13:42), Notts Anaconda (2:13:55), Kingston Pretenders (DNR)

500m Cup Semi

Having come first in our previous race, we automatically qualified for the Major Cup Competition and faced Amathus again along with Kingston Royals and Henley... We could only hope for a something as we needed to get the fastest runner up time to make it to the Major Finals or the next 4 fastest to make it into the Minor, anything else would mean the tail race. It turned out that Amathus and Kingston were in another league of their own, whilst they were battling it out at the front we somehow came last place... This was corrected after Sam was 100% sure that we were in front of Henley and we asked the Marshals to check the video again.

Amathus (1:59:95), Kingston Royals (2:00:20), Typhoon (2:14:52), Henley (2:18:06)

500m Cup Tail

Again with no time to rest, most of the team were worn out from the sun and lack of rest, we were out again for the Cup Tail, since we had nothing to lose and everything to gain, we were more relax coming into this final race and pulled off our best performance at the 500m. The pace was perfect, the calls were made at the right times and everyone pulled together to ensure that we lead the pack all the way to and after the finish line.

Typhoon (2:11:68), Exe-Calibre (2:13:14), Secklow (2:13:42), Henley (2:14:30)

Summary

Well done to Batchworth (aka Typhoon Seniors) on the first 500m win of the season!! We can walk away from our first BDA event of 2010 with our heads held high. We had no expectation, after all this was a fresh team, there was 9 new members paddling to replace those that was in the team last year who were injured or absence this time around. As long as people think that they can improve, this will cause the boat to improve and we can easily make up those seconds and be more of a threat to the big three teams that we had the pleasure of racing today.

We know what we need to work on, let show them what Typhoon can do at Liverpool!!!

Special thanks to our supporters, substitutes and to our helm Sam who sacrifice paddling for the sake of helming for our team.

BDA 2 - Liverpool | BDA 3 - Nottingham