and off I go to give you an account of my two day\u00a0experience watching and cheering on three of our Village Dragon Boat racing teams compete in the annual Orlando\u00a0International\u00a0Boat Festival,\u00a0held in Downtown Disney.\u00a0The teams from the Villages that competed were the Silver Dragons, the Leatherneck Warriors, and the Leathernecks.\u00a0 Races are\u00a0won by just inches making it a fierce competition.\u00a0 The sport, \u00a0simply put is a 46′ long boat weighing 600lbs. and with a crew of 20 paddlers, a drummer and a steers person paddling to cross the finish faster than their competitors.\u00a0 It’s a team sport in its purest form, that encompasses the elements of power, speed, synchronization and\u00a0 endurance.\u00a0 \u00a0Teams often form as a social outlet, team building and an alternative form of exercise and that is why it probably started in the Villages. Right? Social outlet, and exercise is right up our alley and our generation loves the fun and excitement that teams bring,\u00a0making this a \u00a0perfect recipe for success in the Villages. It is the fastest growing water sport in the world and North America has emerged as an international powerhouse because of its sprint canoing background. It is interesting to note that the average age of a Village paddler is 67, and they are competing against younger paddlers which you would think would walk all over them or better put glide right past them.\u00a0If you had to make a bet wouldn’t you put your money down on a police department team or a firefighters team, these\u00a0crew members\u00a0are in their physical prime and age, but you guessed it, if you did you would have \u00a0lost your money.\u00a0 It’s been rumored that the Orlando Police Department crew members, after getting beaten by the Villagers were heard to say, we know you did it but we don’t know how. This weekend’s races comprised of 70 teams from all over the world, and each race was 500 meters long\u00a0with four or five dragon boats competing in each race.\u00a0 It was mentioned to me that it is the only sport that starts a race with\u00a0over 100 competitors all competing at one time.\u00a0 Imagine the power exerted by those crew members.\u00a0 It is exhillerating to see them flying over the finish line winning by only inches and what is more amazing is that the Leathernecks from the Villages won all their races and emerged as the Grand Champions this year.\u00a0 Remember the average age is 67. \u00a0Congratulations Leathernecks for beating all those whipper snappers who think we Villagers are just a bunch of old retirees.\u00a0 You did us proud and showed them a thing or two about power, speed, synchronization and endurance…you brought it all and left it in the water to surface again at your next race.\u00a0 This will be continued with more facts and fun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
and off I go to give you an account of my two day\u00a0experience watching and cheering on three of our Village Dragon Boat racing teams compete in the annual Orlando\u00a0International\u00a0Boat Festival,\u00a0held in Downtown Disney.\u00a0The teams from the Villages that competed were the Silver Dragons, the Leatherneck Warriors, and the Leathernecks.\u00a0 Races are\u00a0won by just inches […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bestvillageblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bestvillageblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bestvillageblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestvillageblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestvillageblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=810"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/bestvillageblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":816,"href":"https:\/\/bestvillageblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810\/revisions\/816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bestvillageblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestvillageblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestvillageblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}