Kellett Island Cup 2021

WORDS: JONATHAN CHUI | IMAGES: STANLEY LAM

t’s my first year with the Royal X team and the Kellett Island Cup was my second dragon boat race (the first being the Middle Island Cup). Even though it was my second race I was still not sure what to expect. As I met up with my friends, they told me that having these two Cups as my first races will ‘spoil me’. I had no choice but to agree with them as we sat in the Bistro having a breakfast buffet whilst we watched the dragon boat races. When it was our turn to race, I was feeling more and more nervous as we got closer and closer to lining up for our boats. I tried thinking back to all the trainings from the previous weeks to recall everything I have learned; making sure to pause, rotating, keeping my head still and looking forward, having my paddle stay longer in the water, etc. As I ran the checklist in my head, we were already lining up under the marquees and ushered along to our boat. In our first heat, we unfortunately had to race against our own team. As our boat waited for the others to get to the start line the anticipation for the race to begin seemed to take an eternity. But once our race started, the heat was over before we knew it. Our boat came in 3rd, and I felt a bit disheartened. However, we had another chance to race in our second heat. As we thought it was our last race, we riled up whatever aggression we

had left in us to win. Unfortunately, we had a slow start, but we manage to slowly catch up and finish just inches behind VRC. I thought it was all over for us, but to our surprise with the lucky draw, we were able to race in the semifinals against our team once again. We gave that race our best shot, but we were not able to move on. Although I was a little upset that we did not make it to the finals, I was quite happy that we at least made it to semifinals with the team that I had trained so hard with in our sessions leading up to the races.

After the races, everyone met up at the roof top terrace to celebrate and to collect their trophies, have some drinks and chat about the day. It has been a long time since I have seen people in large social gathering (of course in groups of four) with friends and family. It was awesome to see everyone socialising and enjoying themselves since the pandemic started. I had a great experience at Kellett Island Cup and although our boat did not win it was still fun to race with the team and with my friends. I hope to race at Kellett Island again next year after I have experienced racing at other race locations to see how ‘spoiled’ I really was in my first year.