2007 Dragon Boat Festival Report
Well Rotarians and friends we rounded out the first 10 years of dragon boat festivals in Woodstock with the most successful event ever. Estimates are that we will raise $25,000 this year! From what the competitive teams said it looks like the event was a success all around.
The following comments are from the Dragon Boat Forum where most of our top finishing teams trade info and comments on events. Thanks to our partnership with OMG this year we also had great coverage from media.
I heard that we were featured on CTV (Kitchener), CH (Hamilton), A Channel (London), Heart FM and KICX FM. The Sentinel Review posted a couple of great articles featuring some of our longest participating teams and some great stories.
2007 Forum Comments
Great event! As always, Woodstock runs a great event. The whole thing including medals was finished by about 4:30!
Great effort by Mojos, Golden Plate and Chaos.
Piranhas were clearly the class of the field
I don't understand the comments about the course being weird. Is it weird because a team loses when you expect to win and you need an excuse as an out? There was nothing wrong with that course. The times were fast and there were few problems out there.
It was also a real thrill seeing so many top teams support this event. The quality of paddling was outstanding and the times were quick.
The event was well staged with many volunteers and great places to pitch a tent. Lots of washrooms and an announcer who just kept talking non stop all day. He actually did a pretty decent job making each race exciting (even if they weren't).
The parking was well thought out and quite conveniently located. The only minor criticism was the food vendor. The line ups were too long. Woodstock may want to add a few more next year and think about adding recycling bins. Oh yes, a beer tent would have been a nice touch for the end.
Overall, it was an excellent event and the organizers should be proud of the excellent job that they did.
Woodstock was excellent. Hard to find anything to complain about... weather was beautiful, park is nice, the volunteers were great, competition was good and the technical race stuff was first rate. Woodstock does a nice job accommodating both local rec. crews and competitive crews.
The course does have some shallow parts and may slightly favor the outside lanes, but it's not nearly as bad as some other places we've raced. With the slight lane bias, I might suggest flipping the lane seeding so that the 4-seed winds up in lane 1 (instead of 4) and the 1-seed in 3 (instead of 2) and so on, but that's just a minor thing.
In light of some of the issues we've seen at other events this season, it's worth noting that Catherine MacInness is an excellent as the starter. She was firm but pleasant and did a great job communicating her expectations to crews. There was none of the usual start line BS we often see at smaller events.
Congrats to organizers and all the teams. And Dave, I like to see an organizer actively seeking input from paddlers. Great way to get better and grow your event. Keep up the good work!
I have not attended Woodstock in several years, but was happy that I had the opportunity to return this year.
To Rob and the P's, great work.
To Dave and the organizers, well done to you too. It's nice to see a festival asking for advice in order to improve. I would say:
1) mist/showers to cool off
2) yes, coffee!
3) a system to get cars quickly into the park (gridlock at 7:30am)
4) signs/balloons/something to direct cars from the highway
Thanks to all the local teams I steered, you made the day pass quickly.
Excellent event! Congratulations on 10 consecutive years of perfect weather! (knocking on wood)
Great event and very well run.
I hope you all got the same level of satisfaction of this job well done as I did. Thanks to all for your hard work and commitment to make this a success.
Now lets get planning for 2008! Who will be the Chair?