In case you haven’t heard a team of 12 have been in Seville for 5 days attending The EDDF European Club Championships. This is an event that you can’t just enter, the British Dragon-boat Association  have to approve your interest to participate, it was a honour that they thought we were a good enough club to participate in the Breast Cancer Survivor  Category. There were 3 other UK teams participating at the event.

Before we left we were aware of the high temperatures in Seville, luckily all our races were first thing in the morning, so after  we could enjoy watching the racing in the shade.

There were 9  breast cancer teams, representing, Spain, Germany and Sweden.

Saturday we raced in the 200 metre event.

Feeling very nervous at the start of the 200m heat, we had a great start  and we were in front but had to work hard and a power push at the end won us the heat and put us straight into the final. We were a little critical at the end and knew we could do better.

The final an hour later we managed to  knock a second off our time 1.07 and we got the silver medal.

Sunday we raced in the  500 metre distance. It was getting hot and if we could win our heat and get straight into the final it would save us racing another heat. A hard race that we lead for 2/3 of the course but we were tiring and letting the Swedish team catch us, a brilliant call of power 20 from Karen won us the race by 3/10th of a second, we were in the final and had a hour to rest. We knocked 5 seconds off our heat time to be clear silver medal winners in 2.55 a great time in a ten man boat, how we deserved this  medal, true grit and passion to get us over  the line, so well deserved.

Taking only 12 team members was hard, we had to deal with a unbalanced boat , 3 different drummers, but as a team we supported each other. Well done Karen who helmed absolutely brilliantly.