While I find the delivery a bit hard to swallow the reality is that pretty much everything X was complaining about has come to pass. Maybe even some stuff she didn't anticipate. You can agree or dissagree as to whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, but it's all true whether you want to accept it or not.

Lets review.

Mixed Club Crew entries for 2006. Basically all the entries are all-star teams put together for the express purpose of winning spots for next years 2006 WCCC with the possible exception of Mayfair, and even that’s a grey area.

Pickering actively recruited everyone they could fine for the last two years. Most of their team was still part of their regular crews this year for all but the race off races. They did not exist in any recognizable form last year

Scotia Rouge was Scotia Beach last year. New location and new imports with the express purpose of winning a spot. They at least races one more race than they needed to this year, but not with any of their Rouge folks. This team did not exist last year either since they were Scotia Beach and many paddles changed.

False Creek maybe one of the worse examples since their all out recruiting actually had the effect of most other “real” club crews skipping the party altogether. This team did no exist last year in any semblance of the team that won the sanction. Congrates.

Mayfair as mentioned is probably the closest thing to a club crew we will have racing and all they needed to do was pop in a bunch of Jim’s Senior Flaties to do it. If you have any doubts then all you need to do is look at GWN when they were not their to see the difference if the teams quality with and without some of them.

G&G. I saved the worst for last. The purest most obvious made to order team. Paddlers flown in and either paid or in kind gifted for their participation as a promotional and marketing initiative by G&G Electronics. With the likely change of the rules to allow for 12 PP’s I expect to see this become basically SRS for the WCCC next year. I hope the 3 actually G&G teammembers enjoyed the ride so far cause they stands are the closest they will get to racing in the actual event next year. YEAH CLUB CREWS.

So what did these crews do wrong? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!

DBC’s incompetence and inability to lay out any consistent rules made this mess and I see no reason to expect it to change. No requirement for showing any crew consistency from last year was the first mistake and originated almost 2 years ago because they didn’t have their act together.

Flip flopping and allowing so much leeway as far as which World Championship actually counted against your PP’s and they allowing grandfathered PP’s once they knew SRS couldn’t still qualify was a joke (SRS, I guess you got them back with G&G didn’t ya)

While I cannot comment on the Western Race off (Such as it was) the Eastern, Central and NACCC’s were an embarrassment of preferential treatment and in the case of Sudbury pure incompetence (Despite Sudbury’s repeated requests for technical support they were hung out to dry). In Montreal Pet DBC teams were given preferred lanes and racing partners as every attempt was made to give them the best possible chance to win a spot. Just embarrassing.

At every race off the DBC members pet teams got preferred positional EVERY TIME. Scotia a team without any significant DBC connections was practically harassed while being forced verify their roster like 5-6 times throughout their qualifications and race off wins while most teams never even saw an official.

The end result is that in the East anyway, teams that we all race 4-5 times a year and all know to be true club crews will all be watching from the sidelines.

So DBC as you go into your AGM, think long and hard on what you have sowed and make sure that this is the direction you want to dragon boating in Canada. How many teams do you think you will get out to your next Club Crew race offs? Will we see Calgary all over again?

The only reason this may not happen is that like South Africa, there probably aren’t all that many crews interested in going over seas. At least no the G&G’s of the world.

Congratulations DBC, you reaped what you sowed.

Still bitter you suck?

totally agree. DBC may have actually distroyed the club crew d-boat scene in Canada. Certainly the elite competitive field. How come theyare the only ones who did not anticipate this? Where is the vision? The club crews have become nothing other than a training ground for the National teams and a way for companies to promote themselves by spending money to stack boats and quarantee their name showing up at the worlds. free publicity. Shame on you DBC!!! I wonder how many elite teams will bother continuing now that they know that next race off will be even worse with the 12pp rule.

Time to find another sport. Maybe something that is organised enough to have actual rules that don`t change with the wind.

http://www.softballontario.ca/

Well said. It's not a matter of not being good enough to win the sanction. It's a matter of losing to teams that were never Club Crews to begin with. If we wanted to fight for the World Championships we would have. There is a reason we have a separeate worlds for national crews and club crews. One should not be a rehash of the other.

Out west I would have to say the only true club teams were Pacific Reach and Roli .Pacific reach stayed true to its same crew it aways had and Roli was pretty much the same w/ the exception of the Roli masters team which was somewhat hand picked at the last minute to try to qualify.

The Roli masters team was a mix of False creek,Subaru and who ever else they could grab at the last minute ( most were former roli paddlers at some time ) while Pacific Reach stayed w/ their team members and even raced the masters team w/ only 19 rather than pull people off from other teams

Fcrcc all yr changed team members right till they got to Calgary .DBC canada dropped the ball because the did not have any sanctioned races out west where they could go back and look at what the crews were in those races and compare them to who showed up in Calgary .Anyway FCRCC won w/ the final team that showed up but Pacific Reach gave them a run for the money and did beat them in the first 500 but seems motivation was lost after PR lost control of their boat while leading in the 250 against False Creek and PR realized that they had no chance of winning as a result of losing the 250 ...too bad as they may have won and beaten False Creek in the final but the mental game was too overwelming for them as it did not matter anymore they had no chance and were only doing it to prove they could beat False Creek.Good effort from a true club team that held true the whole way festival after festival .

I said in the beginning it was going to mainly be hand picked all star teams for the most part and it seems it is.I see in the future ,that most true cleb teams will now stay clear as whats the point in going when you know you have to race hand picked stacked teams

I'm sure TO will be a very good yr for Canada as we have some serious contenders this time round in both premier and Seniors ....see you all there

Please see my post in the other thread. There should be no "Club crew world championships" in the first place. Nobody will ever meet your criteria for a club crew except your own crews. If you really cared about racing you'd find some of the amazing race opportunities around the world and go race your brains out and have fun. Instead you get seduced by the title "club crew world championships" and your desire to be a "world class athlete". You get way too obsessed with that and become irrational, whining, cry-babies when it doesn't happen, saying stupid things like the person a couple of posts ago did..."Time to find another sport".

Personally I'm glad that so many of you whiners didn't qualify. Go ahead and quit. It'll just prove you really didn't have the stuff to have deserved to be selected anyway. Somehow though I bet most of you who are now crying that you are going to quit will be back next year. See you next spring.

Saying the original poster is bitter has nothing to do with anything. Maybe they are and maybe they aren't.

Fact is that everything they are saying looks pretty accurate based on what I saw this year. As a friend on mine suggested, maybe the only way to make this work would be to have the Worlds and the Club Crews in the same year. Otherwise I really don't see any need for having a second watered down Worlds in the off years for quasi club crew allstar national teams.

Same may well happen with the corp games.

It always come down to getting accused of being afraid of competition. The only argument the all-star teams have. Who could falt the original poster for being a bit bitter if DBC hung them out to dry.

Thats a good idea ...have both the same yr and even the same weekend and that for sure would stop most of this ....dreaming though

But he is correct about one thing. They should scrap the Club Crews unless they can come up with a fair, manageable and enforcable way to define and seperate a club crew from all-star and national teams.

The whole thing is too frustration for crews and has to be a huge headache for DBC and IDBF. DBC also clearly dropped the ball on the whole part about not using their power to benefit themselves with all the lane goofiness that went on.

and with the pairings.

Let's take a look at the Montreal Qualifier:

Wongs
Hammerheads
G&G
Verdun
Piranhas
Bytown

First, lets help Wong's get into the finals by seeding based on NACCC. Therefore, top seeds are Wongs and Hammerheads. Leaving:

G&G
Verdun
Piranhas
Bytown

Now, lets look at the rosters and.....oh my god! Take a look at who's paddling for G&G! Let's keep Verdun as far away from these guys as possible. Also, the Piranhas beat Verdun in the 500m at NACCC so let's pair them like this:

Verdun & Bytown
G&G & Piranhas

That's what you get by preseeding. The seeders get to choose.

So the system is not fair because only all star teams are competative ? Lets see , there were 10 or so competative Open Mixed teams in the east , about 250 paddlers. Jeez , 250 all star paddlers !!! In the east alone !
Get real , we don't have 250 top paddlers in all of Canada , including DB , sprint , marathon , outrigger , whitewater.
Teams that go to worlds are top teams , and top teams will have top paddlers. That is the way it should be.
A lot of top (most) paddlers compete in several paddling disciplines so the will not due as many DB races as paddlers who only race DB. Their "race time" must be split up. Outrigger this weekend , sprint a couple of weekends , squeeze in a Db race or two and a few family weekends.Thats okay , no reason not qualify in a club crew.

Yes there may be ten or so competitve mixed crews. But not all of them were stacked all-star crews that were built for WCCC qualification purposes. You know which crews were stacked? You guessed it, the teams that won. You tell me if the Wongs, Hammerheads, Verdun, Sudbury and others were stacked specifically for WCCC.

1. National Teams should be made up of the best paddlers across the country, not a team that happens to win the National Club Crew Championships!
National Team Coaches should be chosen and a selection criteria set out by DBC should be adhered to.

2. Club Crews should be made up of athletes from the region they are racing in, they should be racing under the colours of a club and these teams should be made up of the best Corporate and Community Paddlers in their area, or that they can attract within their region.

3. Corporate and Community Crews should be made up of anyone that wishes to paddle in a corporate or community division - their worlds are in 2007!

I think the misleading part here is the definition of what everyone believes a club crew to be!!!!!!!

If you're in a corporate or community crew and you didn't qualify this year I believe you just didn't get the point - all this babble about all star teams and stacked teams, please folks, these teams were not designed for racing here in Canada, they were designed as potential medal contenders at the worlds - after all, Canada comes first, even above each of our ego's!

Ego's continue to plague our sport, how did our seniors feel coming second and third in pretty well every race at the worlds, Join those two factions together and we'd have gotten gold!!!!!!

Credit the Juniors with getting over the ego issue and delivering a world championship!

The Juniors.....
give me a break.
The Juniors had no competition.....???


The Seniors - The Chinese Team is bascially a very good Club crew that represents China, and we still can't beat them. They've also paddled together for 15plus years.

FYI - Farintosh's senior's beat the Chinese. Jim's seniors took the gold in the 200m at the World's.

Jesus frick'n whining.

So for the first time ever, DBC puts in place a system of actually policing club crews with a plan to improve it (btw, everyone's personal definition of what a "true club" is doesn't count). They recognize the pp paddlers who were developed by their clubs. (remember, the original intent of the rule was to promote club growth), and they actually set up a few sport races.

What do they get for taking a few steps in the right direction? a boat load of grief.

I don't envy the people who are trying to set this organization up.

Why not see the glass as half full for a change? The current organization is actually setting things up for the future.

I wonder how many complainers have actually written to the exec?

The original poster is absolutely correct. These are NOT true club crews. But then again - the Club Crew World Championships aren't true club crews either. Saw all star European teams in Capetown! So maybe we are defining club crew a little too narrowly? Or is the rest of the world reserved to chucking the club crew concept and just using it to give their sub national crews a chance to race? The club crew championship is a pure sham. Just another money grab. How can you blame DBC if IDBF can't event manage it? It'll be a fun race to watch, unfortunately you won't recognize any of the "club" teams.

"I wonder how many complainers have actually written to the exec?"

Excellent point.

If you're upset at how things were handled this year then it would be better to make your complaint heard directly rather than wage a war of words on the Forum. Anonymous postings can be easily ignored as being from "bitter losers", but if you email Matt and company directly and have the guts to use your real name then you become a real person issuing a legitimate complaint.

And yes, I did so myself earlier this year. But I will remain anonymous here. I raised my complaint and was duly ignored. Case closed.

i ALSO COMPLAINED TO MATT IN PERSON AS DID A FEW OTHER TEAMS I KNOW ABOUT. THE DESICIONS WERE MADE AND THERE IS NO GOING BACK. AS IF WE ACTUALLY GET A SAY ON THIS

YEAH RIGHT

So you want me to complain to them using my name and team? Are you insane?

If they promise to abolish the stupid self serving seeding they did this year then maybe I would consider it. No way am I giving them any reason to put the screws to my team.

Once you allow them to deliberately set a single team in a lane in a single race you open the door for what was an all out attempt to position certain teams for best possible outcomes as what happened in Montreal. Anything other than purely random draws for lanes in any DBC or IDBF sport sanctioned events is a total joke.

Things like this undermine any positive efforts they put forth and reduce the image of the organization to Mickey Mouse at best.

You missed the point, you must be in one of the senior programmes,


What was it China - 7 Golds 1 Silver,

Canada - 1 Gold - 7 Silver - 8 Bronze!!!!

wong's didn't make first final. everyone had a chance as based on next best time. As long as top 2 seeds were seperated. wongs/hammer, should be good.

Thanks for bringing up another point. When you have teams that close and timing that bad.... DON'T GO BY TIMES.

Was a mess in Sudbury, NACCC and Montreal. Heats way to close and times way to tight.

Ah, did you miss math class?

You missed the point, you must be in one of the senior programmes,

What was it China - 7 Golds 1 Silver,

Canada - 1 Gold - 7 Silver - 8 Bronze!!!!

This doesn't add up - Did the Chinese miss a race? No they did not!! and yes, I am a senior.

OOPS!! I'm the one who missed math class - please ignore the previous post

Is right on

What a bunchawhinners.

Thank god the best teams qualified and I don't give a rats ass who is in them.It will be great to watch.

ITA with everything Alf said.

I am one of the whiners. I am also on one of the race off teams who will be competing next year. Would you morons get it through your think skulls that it is possible to have an opinion, comment, feedback or opposing view without it necessarily mean that I am bitching about getting screwed out of something?

DBC screwed the pooch about as badly as they could have going way back to when they needed to have finalized stuff a couple years ago in order to have made things work fairly and smoothly. They added to that mess-up at every turn this year with a lack of support at some events, lack of any pre-qualifying out West, and stupidity around seeding teams into lanes (By the way at 2 of the 3 events in the East and Central non-seeded teams won, so they didn't even do that very well).

Actually to be fair, I can say that for sure in Sudbury it didn't work, but I am not sure whether G&G was a top seed in Montreal. They was so much positioning in Montreal I can't really figure out who the top seeded teams were, but rather as a previous poster said, it is much easier to see which teams had been positioned to give them the best chance of winning (read Verdun. Now who on the DBC could possibly have a vested interest in Verdun doing well).

It is also possible, that some posters (Sorry I mean whiners) are bring all this up in hopes of DBC seeing how things are perceived and that maybe, just maybe they may take steps to correct thing for the future. If they honestly want to implement a comprehensive and healthy sport racing circuit with yearly championships (Which I fully support), then they need to make some changes, the least of which is the whole preseeding fiasco and either get hyper accurate timing or go to a repechage system.

An easy fix was suggested by someone and I am surprised why noone has picked up on it. With all these elite guys claiming that they have a right to race Club crews, why not have the Worlds and Club crew Worlds happen in the same year including the race offs and as much as possible on the same weekend. This solution is brilliant. The only other rule change would be that you cannot be on the roster for a World and Club crew world team at the same time. Compleately eliminates having to keep rosters and check them from qualifying race to race etc. F**k it, just have the race offs and the WCCC run on the same weekends as the worlds. End of problems. I`m sure the Budays et al would show their true colours inspite of their claims to the contrary. And for the record, although I hated getting my ass kicked by G&G they met the rules as stipulated by DBC and deserved to be there.

I love this seeding complaining. God people are stupid.

6 teams in mtl placed in two heats.

Could you imagine the amount of complaing if a team got ramdomly placed in the outside twice and there was a strong side wind? especially mtl with a prevailing west wind.

and yes, wind will influence a race in a big way creating side resistance. And not even the fairest course in the world can control it.

Seeding was done fairly. Everyone swapped, either racing in the middle lane, or both the inside and outside lanes. At the end of the day, the fastest team won.

dammed if you do, dammed if you don't

They didn't pre-seed the same way in Sudbury. Mayfair and the Chiros were given the middle lanes for both the 500m and 250m heats. Only the "loser" teams like PDBC, Hanalei, Big Fish and Sudbury Canoe Club we given outside lanes for heats, and they didn't flip them from the 500m to the 250m, they were "randomly" assigned. So some of the "loser" teams got both their heats on the inside lanes, some got both their heat on the outside lanes, and the top seeds (Mayfair and Chiros) got both their heats in the middle lanes.

Fair. Oh yeah.

Any body saying best teams did not qualify ?
No ?
System worked.
End.

Your exactly right. No in is saying that that best teams based on the qualifying rules set in place by DBC did not win. Also no one has said they they all weren't all star teams either so go away already. That is not what we are talking about here.

We are discussing how or should things be tweaked to encourage Clubs Crews as we all understand them to be (IE. the teams we all race every weekend) into competing and whether or not there should be any effort or rules put in place to give non-allstar crews a chance to win Club Crew spots.

If DBC decides to allow or put in place a qualifying process that makes it easy for all-star teams to qualify then so be it, but lets be really open about it up front so everyone can decide if they want to play.

Have a quality race circuit where you accumulate points. check the roster at each event and only invite the top 40 teams based on points to the regatta. that way a team would have to do say at least 2 of the 4 qualifying events and place high or risk not being invited.

I appreciate the thinking behind it, but point systems create complexity where none is required. Club crew qualification should be based on number of races with consistent roster to determine eligibilaty, then a race-off to see which eligible crews get the spots.

Teams have to race 3 or more times in a season to prove their validity, but they can race at ANY regatta where rosters are collected + verified to do so. Quality of water or sport racing niceties (eg held starts) don't matter at these qualifying regattas, but will be very important at the actual race-off.

DB teams as we ALL understand them ?
Big assumption , wrong assumption.
Nobody is saying winning teams aren't allstar teams ?
I am.As pointed out elsewhere , there are not that many all star paddlers in the country.
Some of us think the system is fine from that perspective.
Want to qualify ? Get better.

Well, you may be one. But I think you are in the minority

To be clear "All-Star" refers to a group of paddlers selected or brought together for the express purpose of the race off who would not normally be part of the that crew. So in Pickering case where half the crew or more where and still are part of other crews or for G&G where paddlers were actualy flown in from around the country it is pretty easy to see the distiction.

In the context I mean "All-Star" it doesn't necessarily reflect the quality of the paddler, but rather that the paddlers were for the most part members of other teams who came together to race off.

Perhaps we should use the term "Select" or "Combo-Club" or something other than "All-Star" since you distiction is correct. Bottom line is that if I were to take the top 2-3 padders from 8-10 clubs and train a bit (regardless of whether or not you would consider them all-stars), they would most likely beat most regula (non-select) clubs out there. There is the added negative side effect that the 8-10 clubs the select crew drew from would also probably not race off since they lost their top 3 paddles (this happend with some teams with paddlers on Pickering and it happened for the entire Western Race off).

So they had the AGM, any news?

So,do any of these "Club Crews" have an actual home?I mean any crews affiliated with a canoe club seem too.But until there are clubs built its really hard to define these teams.I for one am very happy for the teams that qualified and look forward to watching them race.I do believe that they are the best that we have.I have no problem with G&G and feel that that group of paddlers worked the system the way they needed to for "friends" to race together.

So one star quality team slipped through the system. Out of a potential 15 crews in premier, 15 in senior and 15 in junior with additional grand master teams that's not so bad. Given its resources I think DBC did a decent job of it. Better than the old days. Have any of you been around that long?

Mayfair has a home.

Now I'm curious, what defines a "Club" in other sports? (Such as VBall, BBall and etc?)

... and what prevents them from recruiting super-stars?

Your proposal sounds a bit like what we do over here.

1. We submit annual rosters of crew members to our national federation. Paddlers are issued IDs which are checked at each race. While new paddlers can be added periodically throughout the season, one can only be a member of one team at a time. This cuts down on switching teams or padding rosters with ringers for race-off purposes.

2. In order to race in the national circuit and be ranked for the national championship, your team has to be a member of the national federation and should attend a specified minimum number of the official races.

3. We have a circuit of race courses that must meet standards set by our national federation (conforms to IDBF rules as much as possible). Races run on those courses in accordance with the national federation racing rules (regulating course lengths, depths, officials, rules, boats, paddles, etc.) are considered official race circuit races (as opposed to "festival" or fun races which may take place on courses of varying quality) and qualify for the national championship point system.

4. Points are awarded for place in the race and the number of official races your team attends. The more points your team has at the end of the season, the better your ranking, thus you earn the right to attend continental/world club crew championships.

This eliminates problems with "ringers" filling teams, as the team roster is fairly consistent throughout the year. This assures fair race results as the official courses are consistent. This rewards good club crews who train hard together and are eager to race.

I agree with those of you out there who feel that club crew championships should be for crews that paddle together frequently, consistently and seriously. To draw a comparison, Olympic ice hockey is for national teams - consisting of the cream of the crop from the nation's clubs regardless of which club individual players play on throughout the year. There are also national playoffs, whereby the professional clubs vie for the title of the best club in the country. You could consider this similar to the purpose of club crew championships.

When I go to a continental or world club crew championship, I want to have a good, fair race against teams who are similar in spirit, dedication and composition to mine and not be out of my league paddling against crews seeded with hot shot, national calibre paddlers. Let's keep the waters smooth and the playing field level.

In case people were wondering I bet that FBW is from England. I think that is how they run things.

The more I think about it the more I like the Points System. Would pretty much eliminate and throw together teams as they would never be able to make enough races to get enough points.

Having like 6 or more sanctioned events would allow teams options and you could then take their 4 best results or something. You race four you get four, you race less there is less chance you will get enough points. You race six, you take your best four points finishes.

Would need to make sure that a team that did only one or two events, but finished first would not be able to accumulate more points than a team that raced 4 times, but finished 3 or 4th each time.

You wanna race, then race.

The English system works well based on their results from various championships.

B-i-n-g-o-Bingo

I bet if all countries followed the English system which supports real club crews then they would do a lot better.

Club crews racing against select or national crews don't fair very well at international competitions or at local club crew race off's don't you think? Regardless of which country this happens in.

Will walk over the hole mix field.

depends who comes as always. the best euro club crews will beat gg

Is there more mix teams or more unisex teams in Europe?

So do none of the national team paddlers race on other teams? Does england have a premier paddler rule?

In case FBW isn't reading the forum, I can answer for her.

GB does not have 2pp rule, it doesn't need one. Teams take pride in the number of premier paddlers they contribute to the national team. I've read it on many of their websites.

What they do have is what FBW has already described, a structured racing league where paddlers are registered with their national body. Their premier national team paddlers are also active, year long participants with their home crews in this racing league.

In many ways it's a good system.

So, does the answer support the conclusion you were hoping to make? Don't play dumb now...

Not playing dumb. The point has been made many times by Larry and Derek that the Flexogen/SRS/MCC/Burloak crew raced together regularly (until this year when it seemed pointless). However, wasn't going to bring it again because it's been discussed ad nauseum - no point in going through that particular exercise in frustration.

"The point has been made many times by Larry and Derek that the Flexogen/SRS/MCC/Burloak crew raced together regularly"

Yeah. Once per year to take the tickets at the island and probably War Canoe at MCC and Burloak

"Yeah. Once per year to take the tickets at the island and probably War Canoe at MCC and Burloak "

On the other hand there was the Suckinators crew, made up of Local 347 employees who also raced only at the Island. They didn't win anything though, so I guess their paddlers can be allowed to race wherever they want?

NO - suckinators have no aspirations for WCCC.

Dude, I just wanted to know what they do in G.B. It shouldn't matter to you why I'm asking.

suckinators...hah.

By the way, I haven't put down another reply since 2:29. All that other stuff is someone else. But the question did sound leading.

Suckinators. Yeah, I like that one too.

Posted from author First Bench Wench "When I go to a continental or world club crew championship, I want to have a good, fair race against teams who are similar in spirit, dedication and composition to mine and not be out of my league paddling against crews seeded with hot shot, national calibre paddlers. Let's keep the waters smooth and the playing field level."

What we have here is two different views, one view Team based, the other club based. I believe the original intent of WCCC is for real traveling clubs that race not just once or twice a year, but been together traveling and racing together for several years. They are incorporated, have non profit status and consistent membership. They generally have their own websites and are active club (fund raise, social events, etc.). These are real clubs, not teams. Her statement "I want to have a good, fair race against teams who are similar in spirit, dedication and composition to mine " says it all. All those other thrown together crews for a specific purpose to win a WCCC spot is not a club regardless what kind of spin you put on it.

At our proxy of a world championship for university students in Tianjin, the Russians seemed to bring the majority of the Vladivostok Tigers. The Italians brought the bulk of their national team and sat their legitimate university students for all races except for a friendship race at the end of the day.

You think that IDBF events are bad...

So are you 100% sure that Italians weren't university students?
You know one can be over certain age and still go to school. Especially if one decides to pursue athletic career first and then go to school.

This was told to some of us BY THE ITALIANS. Did they break any rules? No. Was it against the spirit of the rules? That depends on your interpretation. I'm not pissed at them by any means, the team I coach was nowhere near medalling. My point is - IDBF events ain't so bad.

to 4:14
You think a "club" needs to been incorperated , have a website , been non-profit etc.
MCC is a real club with a website that has been together for years. Incorperated and non-profit too.So are the other canoe clubs. Just what you had in mind I will bet.

You forgot the most important part "been together traveling and racing together for several years." the same people for a few years racing in multiple events each year. If they met that criteria, we can accept that even if they are from Canoe clubs. Yes even MCC, because then they are a true club crew, not all star crew.

"This was told to some of us BY THE ITALIANS. Did they break any rules? No. Was it against the spirit of the rules? That depends on your interpretation. I'm not pissed at them by any means, the team I coach was nowhere near medalling. My point is - IDBF events ain't so bad. "

I see. All right. Now, if the Italians were real students, you think you could have medalled? Not trying to be an ass, just curious about the competition.

No offense taken, but I'm glad you clarified anyway. The team definitely made the step up to be top 6, but it is a long way from catching up to the better Russian and Chinese crews.

eom.

A couple of you posted questions directed to me. Sorry, must sleep, work, train, race and even do some DB development stuff now and then...

(Thanks "Not FBW" for answering about the UK situation in my absence.)

There are also other countries in Europe who use variations on a points system to determine who can attend continental or world ccc's. The points system is even used to determine who attends the Premier WC's and Continental Champs in some countries.

For example, the Netherlands uses the point system for both cc and premier selection. Basically it comes from necessity as I understand it. There are only about a dozen or so serious cc's in the country and therefore a limited number of paddlers to choose from for either premier or cc. Therefore, the best club crew has the first right to attend cc or premier championships. Sometimes it means that a cc is filled out with paddlers from other teams by necessity.

If you talked with Ballast Nedam in Berlin for the ECCC, they had paddlers from at least one or two other clubs filling benches in Berlin. Not ringers, but because members of their own club couldn't make the trip to Berlin for one or another reason. I spoke to one paddler who reasoned that if they had "ringers" from other clubs on their roster, it would piss off their own club membership and result in loss of membership, so it doesn't pay to recruit the best paddlers from other clubs for an event at the expense of your core membership. I could see his point.

The Dutch national team, on the other hand was the Dutch club crew Dutch Dragons, so not a select group of pp's, but the best paddlers that that (NL championship and highest points winner) club could send to Berlin to represent the country in the premiers (their second team was also present in Berlin as one of the club crew entries for the Netherlands in the European CCC).

As to the 2 pp rule, similar to what Not FBW's post said about the UK situation, NL also does not have a 2 pp rule. There are not enough paddlers in the country. Like the UK model, clubs pride themselves on developing the best paddlers possible and send them in one form or another to the premiers.

One essential difference with the Canadian situation that must be considered is that db racing in many of the countries participating in the sport originated from different quarters. In the UK, dragon boat racing has often been allied with rowing. In NL, the sport developed as "pure dragon boating". The first Russian team came from a marine academy with some cultural ties to nearby China. Poland does a lot to stimulate youth development. Germany is split between pure dragon boaters and flatties. Austria is developing from festival racing. Hungary is coming from school sports programs and festival racing. And there's hardly a European db'er who hasn't been to Malmo, Sweden, for the delicious madness of the business-based festival (which has also piggybacked EDBF championships) which is a db event with strong support from local canoeing. Each country has its own opportunities, history and limitations which influence the selections in the country. Some of the countries have a strong, well-regulated circuit of "serious" dragon boat racing events while some are still more in the festival sphere, so that influences the selection process for IDBF-sanctioned events in each country.

It may also explain the disparities in the national team qualities that you saw at the Worlds in Berlin and why some paddlers (including myself) are very strongly in favor of keeping the premier and club crew categories separate and as fair as possible vis a vis selections.

There's an EDBF meeting in Vienna in November. I'll check with my sources there to see if I can find out more about how different countries determine selections and pass on any information that might be helpful to participants in this forum. I'll start another thread if there's anything to pass on as this one's getting a bit off track.

Ultimately, the IDBF gives a great deal of autonomy to countries in how they determine national and club crew selection so it's good that there's something like this forum to allow paddlers from different countries to learn from each other and maybe pick the best ideas from each other to implement in their own countries.

Tell me about the 2pp rule (in a new thread, please). It might be interesting to know on this side of the puddle.

It was a great insight on how Europeans are conducting their crew selections. It seems most of them are honoring the club concept of the CCWC. It also confirm my understanding why certain countries perform well at Worlds and some do not.

IDBF needs to tighten up their crew requirements in my opinion.

You're welcome. As for your comment on IDBF tightening up crew selection procedures, I wonder how that could be implemented seeing as the countries have the autonomy to conduct crew selection as they see fit. If the IDBF were to play heavy-handed, would that upset national feds or solve a problem for them?

If the IDBF were to play heavy-handed, would that upset national feds or solve a problem for them?---

I would think to level the playing field for CCWC you would need heavy-handed crew requirement guidance. From what you spoke of, not every country has a National crew or National crew selection process for the Worlds, but every country does have club crews.

It seems to me it's all about developing a database a year or two in advance of CCWC and keeping track of membership and which races they have competed in. Going into the year of the qualifiers, each club crew should submit a form of their CCWC aspirations along with roster which can be verified through the database. Obviously it needs more details, but it will be a step in the direction. As of now it's always the same few countries that are dominating every year, every champioinship, even though some of the losing countries out number their counterparts in dragon boat participants by 5 to 1. Some countries who have excellent club crews will be crushed by the all-star/psuedo national crews. Then at next CCWC everyone will be try to send their national teams and it becomes a second coming of the Worlds.

Then at next CCWC everyone will be try to send their national teams and it becomes a second coming of the Worlds.

Help me understand WHY you wouldn't want to send anything but your best to the "WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS"?Maybe the name needs to be changed to reflect what it is...An "International Festival"

What is the sense of having two World Championships? It gets kind of diluted, like having the Olympics every year. Doesn't make sense to me.
Worlds for national crews, CCWC for club crews and then CORCOM for corporate community championships. Each championship targets a specific dragon boat racing level. Does it make sense to have 3 championships each with different name, but where same crew/people show up all the time?

yes it should be 3 levels, but do we want thoses levels to be as high as possible??? G and G is a step or two below the national team. Perfect.

Actually, I think that seems to be the intent of WCCC - an invitational international festival. But every country sets it's own rules for how you get to go. Why does everyone insist on picking one or two words from the name and assuming that is how it should run?

Has anyone asked IDBF what the CCWC is aimed for? What part of the paddling community is targeted? Seems to make sense to ask them unless it's one of those questions that gives them a brain lock. We're just playing in the mud right now, slingin' it back and forth.

I did ask and got a prompt response from Mr. Haslam (I was actually very pleasantly surprised). While I don’t feel comfortable posting his response without his permission, in summary he said:

Club Crews are for club level teams. The challenge is that some countries like the Czech republic to not have a club crew base in which to draw from. Basically the National Team in the only team they have. This is why they would most likely go with the 12PP rule so that countries like Czech could still participate.

I basically feel and replied that I think he had the cart before the horse, and that allowing this would hurt the club crews over all and in fact provide less motivation for countries like the Czech republic to bother forming a healthy club crew system.

Feel free to fire him an eMail yourself. He is well aware of the level of sensitivity here in Canada which the event coming here next year. I still don’t think they get it. When I asked how I could get involved with Club crews he suggested going through the DBC. Inquiries to DBC went unanswered.

Surprise, surprise!!!

I can`t beleive that people who make soo much money in this sport are willing to shoot themselves in the foot like this. Very shortsighted!!!

Shouldn't the regs. be for the majority of the countries and grant waivers to countries like the Czechs? Seems to me the preponderence of IDBF member countries are club based witht the excpetion of the former Eastern Bloc countries. WAAAAHHHH!!! Ok call me a cry baby.