IBM Dragon Boat Team success at the Shunde Festival
The IBM Dragon Boat Team competed in the Shunde Festival at Darling Harbour on Saturday, October 28.
Shunde City is situated in the middle of the Pearl River Delta in the Guangdong province (Canton) in southern China between Guangzhou & Hong Kong. Shunde is widely regarded as the original birthplace of dragon boating, which is why this festival is extremely important in a cultural & historical context. Sydney was elected as the host city of the 5th World Shunde Conference, the festival being a highlight for the delegates, the dragon boat paddlers and the spectators at Darling Harbour.
There were traditional components to the day’s racing which added a fun & educational aspect to the team’s usual dogged determination and race day focus.
We were fortunate enough to be invited to participate in a dragon boat parade of 5 traditional boats marking the 5th World Shunde Conference. The boats were adorned with decorations, the most obvious feature being huge flags flapping chaotically in the very windy conditions: and that was before we left the relative calm of the pontoon. We had a bit of a glitch in our boat being ‘headless’, necessitating a precarious return to our embarkation point to have the dragon head attached. The strong wind, combined with the very high flags, made our boat prone to tip from side to side, although remarkably, due to excellent paddling skills, we remained upright, although there were a few close calls.
This spectacle was performed for the dignitaries as well as some dragon dancing in which some of the team performed
There was a demonstration of Asian Freestyle racing which is not normally allowed in Australian competitions. The paddlers are able to stand up, once enough momentum has been built up, in order to gain a further reach, hence a faster speed. Some of the IBM team competed in this demonstration race as part of a sports team.
The IBM team had quite a busy race schedule. We competed in heats against all the sports teams & were placed quite well considering we are a corporate team.
We also raced in the ‘Asian Cup’ as > 60% of our diverse team had Asian ancestry.
We won the Corporate / Social category, beating just one other team entered, but we did win!
It was quite an exciting feeling to receive a gold plate as our trophy from the Shunde dignitaries knowing that the place they represent holds the history to the sport in which we compete centuries later. As well as the trophy, each team member received a gold medal as a lovely souvenir of a fun day out, drama on the high seas and success on the podium.
This has been our first race day for the season, so hopefully this will be the beginning of a successful 2006 – 2007 season campaign.
The IBM dragon boat team will next be competing in Melbourne at the Australian Corporate Games at Docklands on Saturday, November 25 so hopefully all you Melbourne IBMers can come along & cheer us to victory. Last year we missed out on a medal by 1/250 of a second, so we have unfinished business this year!
If this sounds like something you’d like to try, please contact Julie Mungomery for further details. We welcome new members!
