DRAGON BOAT RACING

Dragon Boat Racing has ancient Chinese origins and its history has been traced back more than 2000 years. The Dragon Boat was used for religious purposes as a way of appeasing the rain gods, with racing held on the 5th day of the 5th lunar month of the Chinese calendar. This would help to avert misfortune and encourage the rains needed for prosperity - and the object of worship was the dragon. The dragon of Asia has traditionally been a symbol of water.

Today Dragon Boat Racing involves teams of up to twenty paddlers in a 15 metre decorated boat with a drummer and helm. The Festival Racing events are a fantastic spectacle to witness and be part of – the motivation, enthusiasm and determination of every dragon-boater, the racket of the drums and shouting from the crews and spectators alike, the beautiful Dragon Boats themselves speeding down the regatta course in a mass of spray and paddles, all make Dragon Boating a truly exciting and colourful sport to both watch and compete in.

Dragon Boat Racing is very social and great fun… and indisputably a team sport. There is no other paddle sport in which 22 people work together to create a Team result rewarded through the efforts of the whole crew, rather than a few individual performances. That is the greatness of Dragon Boating.

The CERN Canoe Club is creating the first permanently established Dragon Boating crewing base in the Geneva/Bassin Lemanique area. The aim is to introduce this highly unusual and also highly visible team sport to the area and to make a boat resource available to local companies and organisations. However above all, our aim is to bring together enthusiastic people from all over the area to take part in this extraordinary sport with an ancient past and a very bright future.

The door is open to enter Charity races and the Dragon Boat Festival circuits, and maybe even enter the European Dragon Boat Racing League. Hundreds and even thousands of people take part in these events across Europe and in nearby France/Switzerland.
We want to be part of it and we believe that others, given the opportunity, would love to as well. This is why the CERN Canoe Club is set on creating a dedicated Dragon Boat Racing crew base and boat resource.

UPDATE: We have purchased our first Dragonboat! It's coming end of December 2010!
We'll need to baptise it though, so be alert for the call for the "Dragonboat And Vin Chaud" outing in January!