Biwako Dragonboat Sprint 2007

Finally, we came in FIRST ( not as overall though ). We had our last dragon boat race for this season, 2007 in Lake Biwa. We only had two races, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. It was raining whole day and really cold. Our starting dash in the morning race did not synchronize, so we lost a little bit of speed there. Thankfully we were able to catch up with Team Kappa but still lost to them by 85 milliseconds. We were not sure where the goal was so we just keep paddling and almost bump into the fence

We have to wait for about 3 hours ++ for the next and final race. This time we know our weak point so we concentrated on that. Yattaaaa.. we did it. We got it right. We went ahead from the start and about 150 meters, Kappa was able to catch up to us, they are really fast. BUTTT.. we beat them by 50 milliseconds YEHEEYYYYYY… Finally we got a first place in one of our races.. Everybody was HAPPY and GIDDY we were jumping up and down. Bachiko cried ( she was not able to join because she was injured and not feeling well ) and almost feel like crying too.. was so happy with our performance..

I was sad cause Bachiko, Tama, Mon and Lisa was not able to paddle with us on this race. It would have been more fun and great if all the members were there and taste the fruit of our labour this whole summer.

In the overall, we still lost to Kappa by a mere 35 milliseconds not seconds but milliseconds…WAHHHHH…. When we went back the platform area, the staff were clapping at us, I do not why though. They were clapping and saying
Congratulations, I guess that was for becoming first in this round

The location of the race was in “Kyotei Center”,a gambling place for water-motor racing ( I think ), so there were lots of monitor all over the place and a very big big TV in the center where we could see our performance after each race cause they always replay it.

On the sad part, Yama-chan is moving back to Hiroshima… wahhhhhh. She is one the strongest paddler in the team. I am so glad to get to know and met her, she is one of the kindest person I know on the team. Life moves on and she has also a Life of her own, so all I could do is pray and hope that she will be safe and happy there. And hopefully, she will come visit in Osaka again for the next dragon boat season. Till we meet again Yama-chan.

I was also able to watch a live performance of a professional cheerleading squad, it just like watching Bring it On the movie. Was able to take a video, but am to sleepy right now, will post the pic video later .. gud nyt..

Raiders Cheering Squad

[kml_flashembed movie="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=1480784122643401925" width="400" height="326" wmode="transparent" /]

This entry was posted on Monday, October 1st, 2007 at 11:45 pm and is filed under Dragonboat. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.