3 days ago
Calgary Dragon Boat Festival welcomes athletes bringing home world championship gold
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Despite competing in Germany less than a month ago, Tremblay and Leslie aren't resting on their paddles. They and many of the Team Canada athletes are back in the dragon boat for the annual Calgary Dragon Boat Race and Festival.
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The event runs all weekend, but really kicks off on Saturday, with Friday evening operating as more of a 'sneak a peek,' said Danny Ng, a founding member for the Calgary Dragon Boat Society.
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'We have a dragon marketplace of at almost 60 vendors, 17 food trucks, approximately. And then we have a beer garden — a family-friendly beer garden,' Ng said.
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The festival has been running for more than three decades, but growth spiked after the pandemic. The 2022 festival saw roughly 35 teams competing; this year, there's more than double that.
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Tremblay and Leslie paddled on different boats in Germany, but they're on the same team in hometown waters; a dragon boat squad known as Dragnum.
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Shane Martin is the head coach, a dragon boater for nearly two decades. He says that the annual festival in Calgary has the best race course in Western Canada.
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'We have a nice, long, straight course that's deep across all lanes,' Martin said. 'A lot of places — like Edmonton, for example — they don't have a big enough body of water, so they end up racing on their river.'
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Those teams are faced with turns and currents that are blissfully absent from the Glenmore Reservoir where the festival takes place. At least, until competitors are faced with the unseasonably poor weather Calgary's been subjected to in the last month.
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'Heaven really opened up on us,' Martin said.
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The team's practised through rain, wind, and hail in preparation for the yearly festival. Dragnum is heading into the festival with not just an eye on the prize, but targets on the stern of a few longtime rivals.
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'There's a crew from Edmonton that's come down and took the championship from Calgary for the last two years, and there's another really strong crew in Calgary called Crew Yahoo who've been our nemesis for the past few years,' Martin said.
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