Over the short course of a dragon boat race, the entire field can cross the finish line within 60 seconds. The different between those that finish on and off the podium is no more than the time it takes to call out the sport’s basic command: “Push!”
One West, a competitive dragon boat club that trains at False Creek and draws paddlers from Vancouver, returned to Canada this month weighed down with four medals from the Club Crews World Championships in Italy and an appreciation for those few seconds between first and second.
One West won two gold and two silver medals.
“Our strategy was to get them off the start and then from there, hold on until the finish,” said Paige Misfeldt, 26, who won silver in the women’s 500 metre race. “We lost it in the last 100 metres, right at the finish.”
In the final, the 12 women in the undersized boat were pushed on by their caller Kathleen Abuan. A caller, said Misfeldt, “motivates us at the finish. They tell us, at around 75 per cent of the race to give it our all. They give the ‘Push!’ call to give 110 per cent and you just dump it. Especially in the 500, that was the race of the season.”
One West’s second-place time of two minutes, 23.58 seconds was 1.1 seconds behind the winners from Germany. All eight teams finished in less than eight seconds.
The women won gold in the 200m sprint. One West also took gold in the mixed 200m and silver in the mixed 500m events.
“It feels great to win, like we were on top of the world,” said Anthony Cao, a One West paddler in the 200- and 500-metre mixed finals. “For every race, we had strategized for what to do right after we got off start line. It was mostly up to our caller, Angela [Louie]. She can see what’s going on in the race. If we need to push, she would call it out and we would try to give more.”
Already paddling at maximum output, it’s not easy to amp up power and velocity when the caller demands it, said Cao, 25. “We just try to find it within ourselves. For me, I think about who we’re racing for, which is my teammates besides me and the people on the shore. The strength just comes. And the whole boat moves together so you feel that push.”
One West has send nearly two dozen paddlers to the Canadian national teams, including Cao who raced for Canada in Tampa, Fla. in 2011. Ten more One West racers joined Team Canada for the 2013 World Championships in Hungary and more hope to qualify when the international event is hosted in Ontario next summer.
