By Jason Au

The Piranhas Dragon Boat Club began the 2003 season on the right foot by winning the Guelph-Wellington Dragon Boat Festival for the second year in a row. Fighting a significant headwind that blew across the race course all day, the Piranhas posted the three fastest times posted at the festival, winning their first two races over Castek Chaos and Bod Squad by two to three boat lengths. They finished the day with a commanding victory over CIBC Team Dragon, a perennial force in the Ontario Dragon Boat racing scene.

The Piranhas crossed the finish line in a time of 2:15.50 in their first heat, with Castek Chaos finishing with a time in at 2:23.92. The crew, agreeing that their pace was a little hot, slowed their rate down and re-focused on the fundamentals of their technique. The Piranhas raced what they perceived to be a better race. However, in what was an 11-second victory over Bod Squad’s time of 2:27.26, the Piranhas had actually slowed down, finishing the race in a time of 2:16.08. The team was not so sure that a change in course conditions could be blamed for the half-second slow-down. CIBC, the second fastest team of the day had actually improved their time by a second. This set the scene for the Piranhas’ third and final heat, which pitted them in a head-to-head showdown with CIBC’s ”A” crew.

CIBC’s “A” crew was one of only six teams* to finish ahead of the Piranhas last year in head-to-head competition, and the crew was aware that this was going to be the team’s first taste of pressure of the young 2003 season. CIBC and the Piranhas took off from the starting line side by side, leaving the recreational team that was in the same heat behind right from the get-go. It took a strong finish by the Piranhas to pull ahead to secure a significant victory, as they finished the race in 2:15.30 over CIBC, which finished in at 2:19.24.

The Piranhas used the Guelph Festival to iron out the kinks in their race plan and experiment with different lineups in the boat. Despite endless pre-race tweaking done by the Piranhas’ coach, coaching wunderkind Rob Chang, the result was the same for the Piranhas in each race – victory.

Guelph is an unusual race, in race format, competitiveness and frugality. Because divisional champions were determined by aggregate times (cumulative time of a team’s 3 heats), head to head racing was rendered meaningless, and racing was downgraded into a race against the clock. The race only distributes trophies to the top three in each division winners, and individual prizes, which are only given to the recreational division, consisting of donated beer-themed t-shirts and sweatshirts. The competitive division, in short, is given the shaft by the organizers of the race. While it is true that competitive teams come to Guelph with the purpose of tweaking their race plans and getting some in-race practice prior to the Pickering and Toronto festivals, walking away with nothing after paying an $800 fee is harder to swallow the second time around. What was more confusing was that fact the organizers refused to give us our overall championship trophy. Without going into details about FMG’s Gestapo-like running of race logistics, it is clear that this promises to be the last year the Piranhas return to the Guelph Dragon Boat Festival.