Story by reader Sean Chua
Penang, Malaysia, July 31 – August 3, 2008 – The Mountbatten Constituency Sports Club (CSC) dragon boat team put up a credible showing at the recently concluded 6th Club Crew World Championship, a prestigious world-level dragon boat event.
The Mountbatten CSC team came in 6th out of the 26 teams in the Premier Open 2km event and were first runner-up in the 200m plate final (overall 13th out of 29 teams) for the Premier Open 200m event. The team also finished second runners-up in the plate final (overall 14th out of 29 teams) for the Premier Open 500m.
The competition was really an eye opener for the team as they had the opportunity to race against some of the top teams in the world like the Camarines Sur Dragonboat Team from the Philippines and the Moravian Dragons from Czech Republic in the 200m semi-final event. The team did well when they came in first in the heats with the fifth-fastest time overall. Only the Russian Forward team, the Moravian Dragons from Czech Republic, Nymburk from Czech Republic and Rip the Fondue from Canada were faster.
During the 200m semi-final, the Camarines false-started but the officials failed to recall the Russian Forward and Mountbatten CSC teams in the centre lanes until they were more than half-way through the race. As a result, the team did not have sufficient time to rest before the restart and missed out on the Grand and Minor Finals.
For the 500m event, the team managed to clock a personal best timing of 2 minutes 01.68 seconds in the semi-final. However the timing was not good enough to qualify for the grand final. In the 2km event, the team clocked a timing of 10 min 07.21 sec, to rank 6th among 26 teams from 11 countries, with the Moravian Dragons leading the pack.
Said Mountbatten CSC team captain Sean Chua: “It is through the high standards of the World Championship that we were pushed beyond our limits and were able to identify our weaknesses. This will help us evaluate and improve on the training to bring the team to greater heights in the near future and raise the standard of the sport of dragon boating in Singapore. Asian teams like the small-built-Camarines from the Philippines have inspired us by being able to challenge bigger and intimidating European teams all the way to the grand finals.
Singaporeans should stop setting limits on ourselves and start working hard to improve our fitness, mentality, technique and lifestyle to take on the challenge of closing the gap on the world's top teams. I believe with the right attitude, discipline, determination and cooperation of everyone in the team, we will be eventually succeeded in maximising the true potential of Singaporeans not only in this sport but in everything we do.”
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