Bringing home the gold

County resident wins five gold medals

Cheryl Shannon returned home with a veritable king’s ransom in gold medals from the 16th World Dragon Boat Championships, held in Pattaya, Thailand last month. She was the steersperson on Canada’s Senior C team, comprised of members over the age of 60. This is her seventh world championships, and is different in that she had been a paddler in the previous six. She started dragon boating about 20 years ago on a recreational team, but very soon afterwards was inspired to compete. She currently trains with the Canadian Senior Dragon boat Club (CSDC), based in Toronto, and coaches a competitive team in Belleville. She qualified for the Canadian team this year after participating in a number of tryouts under the watchful gaze of the national team’s two coaches. Team members come from across Canada, from Victoria in the west to Halifax in the east. The team was able to practise a few times together before the championships by attending several selection camps before the final members were chosen, and then at a two-day training camp at the Flatwater Centre in Welland once the team roster was finalized. “We don’t get to practise much together. There’s an expectation that you’re doing your own training with your home team and you come to the race fit and ready to go,” said Ms. Shannon. “Once we got to Pattaya, we had three practices on the water as a team.”

The role of the steersperson is principally to keep the dragon boat on course and in the centre of its lane, as well as to ensure the team’s race strategy is implemented during the changing conditions of competition. “If the boat feels like it’s getting a little weaker, we make the call to bring power back into the boat so that we are most effective. I can tell them to lengthen their stroke or put more power in at the end, if I feel that is lacking. And if it’s perfect I just say ‘This is great! Just keep doing this’,” she said. The coaches determine the basic race plan—how many strokes to start the race and when to add more power, but it’s the steersperson and the drummer who execute that strategy on the fly. “The plan might be to do a ‘power 10’ at the 500-metre mark of a 1,000-metre race, but it might be that we have to do it earlier, because we want to make sure we are in the lead position at some point, so there are minor adjustments on the racecourse.”

Ms. Shannon took part in six races: the Women’s 200-metre, 500-metre, 1,000- metre and 2,000-metre, as well as the 2,000-metre Mixed and 2,000-metre Open. She said that being a steersperson is not as physically demanding as being a paddler, but it is much more mentally demanding. “I think I’ve hugely benefitted from my years of competitive paddling in that I can feel how the boat is doing. I can feel if we’re getting a little soft on our strokes. That’s been an advantage to me transitioning to a steersperson. There are 20 paddlers in a boat and when a paddler makes a small mistake it’s usually not seen or felt, but when a steersperson makes a mistake everybody sees it.” When asked about the nonmedal- winning race of the six she took part in, she said, after a moment’s hesitation, “We finished.” What happens on the water stays on the water.

Overall, she said it was a great experience. “This is my seventh national team, and every year the team is wonderful and you’re meeting people from across Canada, making new friends. The venue at Pattaya was great. The people from competing countries are awesome. On the racecourse they are competitors, off the racecourse everybody’s friends, which is fantastic. They are very helpful and considerate.” She is already looking forward to next year’s championships, which will be held in Italy. It’s a club crew event, so she will be paddling with her home club. In two year’s time she hopes to be on the national team competing in Germany. “It’s a good way to stay active and keep involved in things and check in with friends who live all over Canada.”