21st Jul 2010
Saturday 17 July was the date for the biennial Bedford River Festival which meant it was time for 300,000 spectators to turn out to see the i-Lab Dragonboat return to the water. Keith Purdie was the team captain on the day, and what follows is his account of an afternoon of extraordinary sporting achievement
So, we were here again.
A bright, summer morning on the river bank. Random groups of determined looking people huddling in clusters, identifiable only by their cheap, brightly coloured t-shirts and the rhythmical pounding of drums from the water. It could only mean one thing; it was dragonboat time again.
In 2008 we had struggled against the odds (and a shortage of crew) to become the 25th best dragonboat crew in Bedford. This year, we knew we had to improve.
Initial indications were encouraging. We had a full crew. We had some spare crew. We had determination and we had orange hats.
Our first heat pitched us against Axis Electronics and Robert Peel Lower School. Now, I’m not sure what they put in school dinners nowadays, but it has to be said these guys didn’t look like your average 6 year olds. The fact that a couple of them had beards made us even more suspicious, but we were confident in our abilities as we boarded the boat.
That’s maybe where the cracks started to show. It’s traditional for the drummer to board first and then the rest of the crew to get on in pairs. The lovely Maria (cremePR) had agreed to do the tub-thumping honours in the first round and she took her place, in the bow of the boat, and waited for the rest of us. The problem was that we hadn’t really agreed where we were all going to sit and the resulting reorganisation within the boat made it wobble so much that Maria was clinging on to the drum for dear life and using language that was unsuitable for 6 year old ears, even if they do have beards.
Our time of 72 seconds was, therefore, something of a surprise, although it wasn’t good enough to secure us victory in the heat. Actually it wasn’t good enough to secure us second place either and we returned to our marquee with tails firmly between our legs.
As in previous years, we have operated a revolving door policy for crew members, so a few departures and arrivals meant that we were a very different crew in heat 2. Maria decided that drumming was no longer for her, so Maggie from Incotechnology was promoted to the hot seat and we set off into battle. Our competition this time being a team from Nando’s and a bunch called Highlander.
It’s obviously not just Red Bull that gives you wings; the Nando’s boat flew towards the finish line at an astonishing rate, living up to their witty t-shirt slogan ‘Poultry in Motion’. We, on the other hand, were not quite so rapid and, despite being much quicker that our first heat, came in third – again!
A fresh approach was required, and to find it we decided to decamp to the wine festival site, where Sarah Abbott confidently predicted that we would be much more effective as a team if we drank Reisling. We duly obliged (several times) and returned to the competition in high spirits.
This was it. Make or break time. Another crew change had seen Maggie depart (probably too embarrassed to be seen hanging around with us) and Regenology’s Richard Overton taking over the drum. Man, that cat can sure beat out a mean rhythm, daddy-o. The boat surged through the waves, paddles thrusting in unison, as 10 strong hearts gave it their all and 10 strong backs put their, um, backs into it. The result was, again, surprising. We got out of the boat on a high and rushed to the scoreboard, where we expected to see that we’d knocked another big chunk of our best time, only to discover that we were a second slower. Stunned faces all round! Should we lodge an appeal? Should we demand a re-run? Or should we just put it all down to experience and revel in the fact that we hadn’t come last (for a change) and that our combined results had elevated the i-lab from being the 25th best dragonboaters in Bedford to the 21st.
I think you know what we did; and we’ll do it all again in two years time, so don’t throw those orange hats away!
