BDA Preston 2010
Round 4 - TOP OF THE 200m BDA Premier League!
(By Tin Bong Lau)
Of all the events in the year, this has been, and probably will be, the most stressful and most eventful yet. But commitment from a solid 20 plus our special volunteer drummer ensured we left Preston with our heads held high and with some silverware too.
Personal holidays threatened to take away close to half our paddlers, but when the team came calling the ones who could… pulled through. There was a lot of talk about people giving up holidays to be there, but what good is giving up a holiday if there wasn’t also a committed team already? Every one of the people who rolled up at The Riversway, Preston at 8.30am on Sunday 13th June 2010 had to give up their own time for the team. And every one deserves praise for their dedication and enthusiasm for the club.
Rumours had it that Preston would see a lot of weakened teams and that turning up alone would guarantee us some big points. But we are in the Premier League and there are no easy points.
200m
Our first race saw us against the new boys, the Crusaders. Maybe we had a typical Rage start, maybe we underestimated the Crusaders? But we were pushed to the very limit before crossing the line to win in the second fastest time of the heats. The semi finals saw us against more recognised competition in Hurricanes. However, this time we were awake and alert and stormed the start and powered through to the finish line and we were through to our second Majoe Cup Final and guaranteed silverware.
Against us in the Final would be Kingston and Amathus. Some adjusting on the start line led to us being left behind at the start. No excuse though as the distance we eventually lost by was far more than what we lost out on at the start. We need to be more composed and more disciplined. But our second Major Cup Final is still a big step forward and the points gained also means we will be top of the 200m League, just one point above Kingston having raced the same number of events.
500m
The first race saw us jump off the start line and pulled strongly throughout the race. We finished 13 seconds ahead of the second place boat with the second fastest time in the heats again.
Our mood was good and we stayed focused for our semi final where we bumped into Amathus. It was a bit of a surprise, but we gave them a solid race and finished a boat behind. It’s very much the same old story, but we will beat them one day and they will regret meeting us in the semi finals.
Regardless of the result we had put our all into the race and we were not disheartened by the result. It was another Minor Cup Final for us, and we would be facing Hurricanes for the second time. We set off like we did in the 200m and gained a solid lead, but slowly and surely we were being reeled in. The finish line seemed to get further away just to give Hurricanes the distance they needed to pull a finish on us. A tight race that ultimately saw them pip us to first place. We didn’t score as highly as we would have liked in the 500m, but it was still a very good effort by a makeshift team who arrived and competed with heart and passion.
There were no ‘weak’ teams and we had to fight and compete fully to ensure we came away with results that are consistent with what we have achieved to date. We may consider ourselves unlucky with the number of regular members away, but we are no different from any other team and we can only race against the teams in our race. What we can take away from this is that we are a top 3 team, we are doing the right things in training and we have the strength in depth even in our darkest hours.
We now have our position in the 200m League to defend. Now that we are at the top, everyone will be looking to topple us and take our place. And though there are teams who have raced less, that is not our problem. We keep winning and competing and they will run out of events to catch us up!
Thank you to all who attended as it took each and every one to make it happen. We are at the halfway point and we should be aiming for an even better second half of the season.
Next event is Exeter… lets see some ‘Yes’ in the spreadsheet.
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