Race Report - London Victoria League Event, 3rd June 2007

The Runners and Riders

Premier Teams	Standard Teams
Batchworth Henley Bristol Empire Dragons Kingston Royals Thames Taniwhas BA Hurricanes WAM Amathus DBC Amathus Bees Three River Serpents	Worcester Dragons Thames Raging Dragons Colenorton Secklow 100 Notts Anaconda Typhoon Tigers Kingston Pretenders

Scratch Teams
BA Tornadoes Cool Runnings The Brotherhood

The Report

Given the uncertainty of the weather everyone had packed waterproofs and sunscreen and set off to London Victoria Docks.  With only 18 paddlers confirmed it was going to be a hard day.

Looking at the array of new tents and gazebos it was clear that lessons had been learned from the Bristol experience. As it turned out the tents and gazebos were needed as shade because it turned out to be a glorious sunny day.

We are notoriously bad at 200 metre races but we progressed well and finished 6th in the premier but 8th overall.

For the 500 metres we were up against our new found friends 3 River Serpents – I think being cold and wet and sitting under a bridge for some 10 minutes at Liverpool  gave us something in common.  This time we managed to just beat 3 Rivers and progress without going through the reps.  This is an unusual position to be in. Three Rivers 2.04.20  Bristol 2:03.91.

During the time we had on our hands because of missing the reps we tried to teach our Canadian paddler Janet some cockney rhyming slang.  It certainly gave us an interesting time and I don’t think Janet will be appearing any day soon on East Enders!

Knowing what to do whilst waiting to take part in the racing again threw us and it soon became clear that we had lost some of our fight!  In the semis we were up against The Brotherhood, Kingston and Typhoon Tigers. Kingston stormed away leaving us to trade strokes with the Tigers.  They narrowly beat us to finish second Kingston 1:57: Typhoon 2:099:42 and Bristol 2:01:99.  Had we not had the break we may have won this in any event the time was not as good as the  first qualifying 500 metres race.

In the cup Minor Final we were placed against Raging Dragons, Three River Serpents and Typhoon Tigers.  This was a race too far for our crew and we didn’t exactly put up much of a fight and finished 4th with a time of 2:07:74 some 8 seconds slower than our first race!

It was an up and down day but eventually finished 8th on the day but 6th in Premier League.  I think this was a race to many for our 18 battle weary paddlers.

The Bristol Empire Dragons' Boat

Drummer	Will Edwards
Crew	Left Side	Right Side
	Del Kyme (Coach)	Shaw Beattie (Club Captain)
	Gary Edwards	Ian Elliott
	Gary Corr (Vice Captain)	Candy Elliott
	Bob Meridith	Matt Hodgson
	Bharti Tailor	Chris Rusworth
	Tim Donovan	Rob Britton
	Ginnett Corr	Adam Mills
	Ben Callaghan	Darren Duval
	Pam Beattie	Sylvia
Helm	Bill Beattie (Assistant Coach)
Team Manager	Shaw Beattie

Prelimery Results of the 500meters

Premier	Crew	Points	Position Overall on the Day
1st	Thames Taniwhas	16	1st
2nd	Amathus DBC	15	2nd
3rd	Batchworth	14	3rd
4th	Kingstone Royals	13	4th
5th	Three River Serpents	12	6th
6th	Bristol Empire Dragons	11	8th
7th	BA Hurricanes	10	9th
8th	Henley	9	12th
9th	Amathus Bees	8	13th
10th	WAM	8	18th

Standard	Crew	Points	Position Overall on the Day
1st	Thames Raging Dragons	16	5th
2nd	Typhoon Tigers	15	7th
3rd	Secklow 100	14	11th
4th	Colenorton	13	14th
5th	Kingston Pretenders	12	16th
6th	Worcester Dragons	11	17th
7th	Notts Anaconda	10	20th

Scratch	Crew	Points	Position Overall on the Day
1st	The Brotherhood		10th
2nd	Cool Runnings		15th
3rd	BA Tornadoes		19th