Only 14 teams in the competitive mixed division so far. More quality than quantity...

OHDBC Mayfair Predators
SCC Team Chiropractic
Eat Trout Mixed
Eat More Trout
PDBC Premier Mixed A
PDBC Junior Mixed
PDBC Premier Mixed B
PDBC Senior/Gradmaster Mixed
Collingwood SideLaunchers
Team Chaos
Air Canada Jetstart
Tailgators
Sudbury Canoe Club Phoenix
OPS Civil Dragons

Are all the PDBC teams going to enter in the competitive division this year

I like this festival. It’s a beautiful location and they get big crowds and strong community support. The only thing that stops it from really taking off with Toronto teams is the length of the drive for a one day event.

Good to see PDBC back with so many teams. They’ve returned more than the value of last year’s prize money.

Sudbury is perfectly positioned as a tune up for the race off. This event is a preview but without G&G.

Predictions?

Who is this team? Is that the old SCC Dragons? Or is this the remains of another Sudbury team?
Anyone?

This is a splinter team from the dragons along with a lot of new paddlers.

It should be interesting to see how the chiros do against mayfair this year

Hmmm....I'll go with they won't be close (not slagging, Chiro is great, but it won't be as tight as the wash riding final fun at GWN last year).

Evidence:
Seniors well ahead of Chiro in Ottawa - Seniors well behind Mayfair in Pickering.

1. Mayfair -no doubt
2. Chiro - will be strong but...
3. PDBC A - good crew will be a solid third
4. Eat Trout - again a good crew, will push for 3rd
5. PDBC B - it starts to fall off here
6. Eat more trout - ? not sure about this.
7. Collingwood - hard to say with these guys they go up and down
8. PDBC Juniors - could move up from here
9. Team Chaos - improved team
10. Jetstart - a coin toss between them and Team Chaos
11.PDBC Grandmasters - a solid 11th in a strong field
12. SCC Phoenix - if this is a splinter of SCC dragons with more new paddlers then i dont see them any higher then this - but that is a big if. A wildcard team
13. Tailgators - a throw together team in a deep field
14. OPS Civil Dragons - good luck.

Collingwood, Jetstart and Chaos will all be ahead of the PDBC B and Juniors.

1. Mayfair - Dominant. At this point this crew might be the best club crew ever assembled in Canada.
2. Chiro - A clear second....and clearly not good enough
3. Eat Trout - Will nose out PDBC by a dragonhead. Will celebrate with fish.
4. Collingwood - hard to say with these guys they go up and down
5. PDBC B - Urbanik never races his crews full out unless the race matters. X-Pads, PDBC Elite and most recently the Mofos have done entire regattas where they intentionally don't do finishes at all. Gigs up. we know you do this.
6. Eat more trout - Might even finish 5th depending how "good" PDBC's 90% is.
7. PDBC A - The second team will also have the benefit of carrying the "A" designation to "throw off" other crews
8. PDBC Juniors - No money this year = Less forum abuse
9. Jetstart - Most of their good paddlers will be here as a warm up for the Open qualifier the following week. They'll be their faster version for sure.
10. Team Chaos - Will be about a quarter of a boat behind Jetstart but both will well back of the pack.
11. SCC Phoenix - if this is a splinter of SCC dragons with more new paddlers then i dont see them any higher then this - but that is a big if. A wildcard team
12. PDBC Grandmasters - Solid coaching for this newbie crew will get them ahead of some veteran community teams
13. Tailgators - Good racing experience and a great way to gauge yourselves.
14. OPS Civil Dragons - I applaud their adherence to Sudbury competition class rules (no more than a handful of practices to be in the rec division). This may be a race were you will see the winner cross the line while the last place team is halfway.

Didn't write my own comments for Collingwood and Phoenix. Oh well. Do something special and I will remember to next time.

Good luck to all crews and sincere best wishes to the Tailgators and OPS.

Well Mayfair won with open water over Chiro. Chiro had no juice left at the end. Their get up and go got up and left. Great race, bad weather.

More Details?

Anyone? How about a top 20.

Sudbury Dragonboat Festival 2007 July 14, 2007 5:10 PM
Race #47, Event #2: Competitive Mixed CMX-Final 2 Ramsey Main
Results

Lane Team# Team Challenge Result Place

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5 202 OH- Mayfair 01:54.00 1

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4 212 Chiro 01:58.50 2

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6 205 Eat Trout Mixed 02:03.20 3

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1 208 Tailgators 02:06.10 4

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2 209 Jetstart 02:08.80 5

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7 214 SCC Phoenix 02:09.50 6

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3 201 Team Chaos 02:10.20 7

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Where's Pickering and Collingwood?

Collingwood was DQed in the semi after colliding with Eat Trout, and put into the 'B' Division.

How about PDBC? Did they even show?

what to say about sudbury.

1. The weather was really, really, really, really bad. The rain, combined with the wind and temperature made it a miserable day for everyone.

2. The overall race schedule was way to complicated. The organizers clearly have never heard of keeping it simple. I cant tell you how many recreation level paddlers were left scratching their heads at the "results" board trying to figure when their next race was going to be.

The women's and open races were combined so that, half the open field would race against half of the women's field.

They changed the format after the semi finals from having 3 competitve finals of (5,5,4) to (7,7), and had no clue which lanes to place teams in the final. They went back and forth between placing Jetstart and Tailgaters in lane 1, where it REALLY should have been SCC Phoenix in the shallow lane. The SCC team ended in lane 7 which between lane 1, 2 or 7 was the best lane to be in.

Why change your format for the final seeding AFTER the semi finals races are complete? Doesn't seem right.

Many thanks to the countless volunteers who worked very, very hard to make this event happen in spite of the very cool,windy and wet weather. Your smiles, hard work and general good mood on such a rainy day helped make the festival as good as possible for us all. Thank you Sudbury!

what was going on with PDBC? I saw a lot of PDBC boats go out with fewer then 20 paddlers.

Agreed. Great stuff from the volunteers. Rain, wind and cold made it an uncomfortable day for everybody, but they really toughed it out. Sudbury usually draws big crowds but the whole place was deserted yesterday. You had to feel for the organizers.

That said, what officials did with the competitive division was simply wrong. Sure it was cold and wet and we all wanted to go home, but you can't re-write a race progression on the fly. The A final was to include the three semi winners plus the next two fastest times.

They changed the final after the semis had been run. And lane allocations in the enlarged final were questionable. How did the 7 seed wind up racing next to the 3 seed (in the deepest water)? And how do the 5/6 seeds wind up side-by-side (on the shallow side of the course)? What kind of rationale explains this?

Lane 1. Tailgators (seed 5/6, semi time 2:16:70)
Lane 2. Jetstart (seed 5/6, semi time 2:16:70)
Lane 3. Chaos (seed 4, semi time 2:16:20)
Lane 4. Sudbury Chiro (seed 2, semi winner 2:06:20)
Lane 5. Mayfair (seed 1, semi winner 2:05:50)
Lane 6. Eat Trout (seed 3, semi winner 2:16:10)
Lane 7. Sudbury Phoenix (seed 7, semi time 2:19:60)

I've always had a great time in Sudbury. But right now I'm wondering if I want to go back to an event where officials won't adhere to a fixed race progression/seeding method.

. Mayfair -no doubt - YEP NO DOUBT!!
2. Chiro - will be strong but...NOT AS STRONG AS MAYFAIR
3. PDBC A - good crew will be a solid third - IF YOU HAD BROUGHT ALL YOUR GOOD PADDLERS??? Finished dead last after a DQ in the b final
4. Eat Trout - again a good crew, will push for 3rd - A GREAT CREW WHO DID FINSIH THIRD
5. PDBC B - it starts to fall off here - AND YOU FELL WAAAYYYY BACK. 13th out of 14 with a time of 2:35, where was the rest of your crew.
6. Eat more trout - ? not sure about this. A SOLID SHOWING - finished a respectable 2nd in the B final for 8th overall
7. Collingwood - hard to say with these guys they go up and down WOULD HAVE BEEN UP THEIR BATTLING EAT TROUT FOR 3RD BUT GOT DQ'D IN THE SEMI FOR HITTING THEM WITH LESS THEN 100M TO GO
8. PDBC Juniors - could move up from here - OR DOWN - WHICH THEY DID
9. Team Chaos - improved team - RESPECTABLE SHOWING IN THE A FINAL
10. Jetstart - a coin toss between them and Team Chaos - WON THE COIN TOSS THIS TIME AND BEAT THEIR SISTER TEAM IN THE A FINAL COMING IN 5TH OVERALL.
11.PDBC Grandmasters - a solid 11th in a strong field - ACTUALLY A STRONG 10TH
12. SCC Phoenix - if this is a splinter of SCC dragons with more new paddlers then i dont see them any higher then this - but that is a big if. A wildcard team - HAD A STRONG SHOWING - AND WERE GIVEN A NICE GIFT BY THE HOMETOWN ORGANIZERS BY BUMPING THEM UP INTO THE A FINAL
13. Tailgators - a throw together team in a deep field - FINISHED A STRONG 4TH OVERALL - GOOD JOB
14. OPS Civil Dragons - good luck. BEAT OUT THE PICKERING B TO AVOID LAST OVERALL

I agree with Andrew.

According to the race book, the method of placing the top 7 seeded teams in a final was

Lane 1 -> seed 6
Lane 2 -> seed 5
Lane 3 -> seed 3
Lane 4 -> seed 1
Lane 5 -> seed 2
Lane 6 -> seed 4
Lane 7 -> seed 7

As the steersman of the Tailgators, I was disappointed with the lane assignments for the finals. No idea why Mayfair was not in lane 4, or why all the other changes were made.

The weather was miserable for most of the day but luckily for the last race the rain stopped and wind died allowing for a "clean A final" to take place. Mayfair = Wow. Thanks to the volunteers who had to suffer outside all day. Pneumonia anyone? The race format and lane seeding was questionable. What was the point of the first race if it was not going to be averaged with the second race to seed the teams for the final? Mid-day race conditions were dangerous with collisions and a cox falling out of a boat. Despite the cold the racing was enjoyable. Well done Sudbury organizers!

Not sure why people are complaining about the lane assignments for the 5,6 and 7th place teams, according to Joels race book they were the only ones who ended up in the published lanes. seed 1-4 were reversed. Is the lane bias that bad in lanes 3-6 to make a difference? Or is it people looking for excuses. Looks like the tailgaters rose to the challenge

I actually hadn’t seen the race book. All I know is that it was supposed to be a 5 team final and, after it was expanded to 7, the seeding didn’t follow a logical pattern. Without knowing which lanes didn’t match the race book it was still clear that something was off.

And yes, it does matter. Pre-determined rules governing competition are the foundation of competitive sport. Officials changing or ignoring rules in mid competition undermine the competitive integrity of an event.

If you care about the sport then, like Joel, this kind of nonsense should bother you regardless of whether it affected your team.

UNBELIEVABLE VOLUNTERS, These guys stood in 10C to 15C temps and driving rain ALL DAY , sometimes wearing only a tee shirt and garbage bag. And they were chearful right to the end ! Some of us paddlers need more of that atitude.
Congradulations to Mayfair , they were awsome. The last time a boat walked away from me like that was Shun De in China.Remember when 2:00 was fast ? These guys are never that slow.
I didn't understand the scheduling but but it worked out well. I did 6 races at regular intervals, which is perfect.
Thanks to the organizers , and thank goodness for the heated change rooms.

Gord, I agree that the volunteers were exceptional. We had the luxury of running back to our tents and cars to get warm and put on dry clothes between races, while the volunteers were out in the elements for the duration of the festival. In spite of the weather, the volunteers in the marshalling area and on the docks were upbeat and helpful the whole time.

I'm not surprised that a crew lost a steersperson during the semi-finals... I don't remember any races with waves breaking over the bow paddlers like they were during the semis on Saturday.

Thanks to SCC and the whole community for their hospitality.

Give those Sudbury volunteers a raise or at least free cold medication. I'm sure a few will need some Contact-C this week.

Volunteers in the water and in the marshalling area were great, going above and beyond what you'd think you could ask anyone to do. People in the Judges tents were world class jerks. Raising a huge stink over people trying to place there coats in a corner of the their tent.

Sounds like Wildwood back in 2001

The race officials need a good shake after this festival.

First, regarding lane assignments, according to their race progression format the preferred lane allocations go 4,3,5,2,6,1.

I spoke with a race official in the morning and he told me that they decided they will not use lane one for any of the competitive teams because of a complaint that it was too shallow. They decided to bump every lane out 1 spot.

Therefore the preferred lane allocations should have been 5,4,6,3,7,2. So for a 5 team final the lanes would have been.

Lane 5 Mayfair
Lane 4 SCC Chiro
Lane 6 Eat Trout
Lane 3 Team Chaos
Lane 7 Tailgators OR Jetstart (they had "identical" times in each of their semi finals). I put identical in quotes as their timing was not precise, only measured to 10ths of a second as compared to hundredths.

Changing your format to who qualifies for the final AFTER the semi finals are finished, when the 7th team to slip in was one of the "home teams" is a little suspect.

Making these types of changes on the fly caused confusion in the timing tent, and on several occasions times were attributed to the wrong teams.

Some times they corrected other times they just left it as is.

No doubt Sudbury was tough on both paddlers and volunteers. And yet, all rose to the occasion and turned out a most memorable event.

With only 14 teams duking it out for competitive glory, I don't really care that they veered from the race book and consolidated the finals. As a spectator (ya, like I'm leaving my tent), I'd way rather watch a 7 boat final than a 5, so I think the event benefited in the end despite the dearth of watchers-on.

Hats off to Mayfair. You guys continue to impress. I was sitting in my boat wondering "what the heck makes these guys so freaking fast" and yet again you crushed me all the way to an impressive victory. Eating your wash is a lesson in stick-to-itiveness.

To all the volunteers, thank you so much. I hope my smile shone enough through my shivering to express my appreciation.

We'll be back and next time, we'll be faster.

Usually I post this stuff in it's own topic, but it seemed appropriate to drop it here instead.

Nice picture. Very much as previous posters described it.

http://www.thesudburystar.com/webapp/sitepages/content.asp?contentid=613204&catname=Local+News&classif=

Some tidbits:

"The weather didn't co-operate. In fact, it was downright "miserable" the entire day, organizers acknowledged."

"It's one of those days that you know is going to come.
When you hold the event every year and you're committed to racing on a specific day, you're susceptible to the weather and you can't do anything about it.""

"In particular, Tilander cited the Mayfair Predators, from the Toronto area, which was the fastest team in this year's festival, twice breaking the magic two-minute mark, including the top time of one minute and 54 seconds.

"It was pretty to watch," he said. "That was a perfect paddle. They were just scary good.""

"Officials changing or ignoring rules in mid competition undermine the competitive integrity of an event."
You do realize yo're talking about dragonboating don't you? Words like integrity just confuse the community

It's going to be great next year when the IDBF/DBC get hold of the Club
Crew rules and stop the purpose built crews - that will include Senior,
Junior and Premier.

How to go faster - pull every top paddler you can dim wit.

"It's going to be great next year when the IDBF/DBC get hold of the Club
Crew rules and stop the purpose built crews - that will include Senior,
Junior and Premier."

Yeah, when pigs fly.

There is no way of preventing this. The old 2PP rule (is it 8PP now?) and the use of "qualifying" races was the last attempt to ensure that only true "clubs" could attend Club Crew Championships. Even those don't really work, because they're both too restrictive and not restrictive enough. They don't really address the real problem: we have TEAMS in Canada, not CLUBS.

The Canoe Club model doesn't work in Corporate/Community dragon boat paddling. It's a round hole and we're trying to jam square pegs into it.

All most "clubs" have to do is take a team, jam the initials DBC after the team name, and attend the minimum number of qualifying festivals. But does this accomplish what we really needed it to do? You can still stack rosters, you can still build all-star crews. Nothing in the current set of guidelines protects bread&butter club crews from all-star raiders.

Not everyone thinks you need to do this however. I can guess where some of that comes from, the very Canoe Clubs who fit the definition best of all! Amazing irony, that.

But we digress.

Great job in Sudbury. Weather happens.

Correct. Canoe Clubs actually form the true definition of a DB Club Crew.
The rest are just teams prepared for the "two" qualifying races.

Don't completely generalize...some of "the rest" train as a team all year and race more than twice. There are quality teams that work to the spirit of the club crew designation, out there.

I agree I don't like the 2 qualifier system. When first told of it, I was surprised because I thought DBC was going to use rosters from 2006 events to determine 2007 club crew eligibility. Since it was all about club consistency after all. If there is an 8 paddler change over rule, then 2007 race-off rosters could only change by 8 people in total from their 2006 rosters. Crews with more differences would need to show cause for such a change (large turnover) and perhaps need to go through roster requalification through qualifier events.

Under the current system, we essentially all start from scratch (where's the attempt at consistency?). Which makes it just as easy for a purpose-built crew to be built and to "qualify" through 2 events as it is for a legitimate, consistent long-standing crew.

Since I'm on the topic, for efforts of consistency and transparency, I think it would be a good idea to post club crew rosters online on a per-qualifier basis. That way, we know exactly who is where and who is legitimate. I also don't think it is very legitimate for a crew to show up with 14 paddlers and "qualify" their crew at a qualifying event. I realize that Piranhas Open did this but that was after we tried to get an exemption and were essentially told that showing up with 14 and racing would still count.

This is not meant to criticize DBC, who I fully appreciate and support. I mean this as constructive feedback.