Dragon Boat Festival Attracts 260 Competitors

SARASOTA - On a day reserved annually for the fastest two minutes in sports at Churchill Downs, the inaugural Sarasota Dragon Boat Festival was responsible for the fastest 90 seconds in Nathan Benderson Park history.

Teams of 20 paddlers, one sweep and one drummer took to the burgeoning world-class rowing facility in long wooden boats equipped with a golden dragon's head at the bow and a decorative tail at the stern on Saturday. The Champion-manufactured Dragon Boats provided to the teams of corporations, representatives of rowing organizations and collections of friends and family members are the same ones that will be used in the 2011 world championships later this summer in Tampa.

After the teams competed in training runs, they were placed in three divisions. The three championship heats proved to be spectator-friendly with thrilling finishes and a couple of splashes.

The splashes came in the three-boat Division C championship heat. After dueling to the finish, crew members from the MCHD Dynasty and the Diablo USF Crew saw their boats soon capsized.

Fortunately, the paddlers and the boats only needed some towels and a little bailing. For the record, the Diablo USF Crew, which partially represented the , edged the MCHD Dynasty by 1.52 seconds with a time of one minute and 20.79 seconds.

A crew known as Dragon Team Six won the four-boat B Division championship with a time that was just a shade over 1:17. The Manatee Dragon Flyers were second in 1:21.65, the Sarasota Scullers were third in 1:23.04 and Team Your Choice rounded out the field in 1:24.48.

The Punta-Gorda based Draggin' Dragons claimed first in the four-boat A Division championship in a time of 1:11.25. The six-year-old team's average age is 65 and its oldest paddler is 84.

The Villages Grand Masters from Florida's largest retirement community finished 4.02 seconds to finish second behind the Draggin' Dragons. A crew known as the Intimidators had the fastest time of any local entry in the competition by covering the course in the A Division heat in 1:15.27, while a crew representing Benderson Development was fourth in 1:19.51.

"We had two out-of-town teams and 10 local teams," said Joe Sinkovic of the Tampa-based Pan-Am Dragon Boat, which organized the event. "A great turnout. Just the teams themselves represented 260 participants."

Pan-Am Dragon Boat is planning another festival to be held at Benderson Park in October. Sinkovic said that a bid is being prepared to host the 2016 Club Crew Dragon Boat World Championships at Benderson Park.

"It's one of the better courses in Florida," Sinkovic said. "There is a major project that is going to undertaken to make it a world-class rowing and paddling facility. The sport of Dragon Boat is going to be a big part of it. We're really looking forward to the future here."

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