Dragon Boat Challenge 2026
- The Webmaster
- 3 days ago
- 2 min read
The 24th York Rotary Dragon Boat Challenge was held on the 12th July. After a spell of very hot weather a cooler day was appreciated by all, the only downside was that it was a breezy day and that made some of the paddling more challenging.
Overall approximately 115 people were involved in running the days event, made up mainly of volunteers, but with the usual very competent team from Dragon Boat Events Ltd who we employ to manage river activities and Empire Security, our security company.
The set up of the site started shortly before 7.00am and was mostly complete by 9.00am, a fantastic effort by everyone, enabling racing to commence on time at 10.00am. The full days racing progressed very well.
The York Rotary tea tent as organised by President Jane went very well. The ta tent involves co-operation by all of the bakers and the people who staff the Tea Tent, partners of Rotarians, Inner Wheel members and friends. This year with President Jane having other duties the tea tent operation on the day was managed by Koreen Hubbard, a friend of Janes and she did a fantastic job.
The racing went very smoothly and culminating in the Grand Final at 4.00pm. The timing of the Grand Final was carefully managed to fit in with an interval in the York Comedy Festival that was taking place in the Museum Gardens.
The best dressed team award was won by Crombie Wilkinson Wave Warriors.
After an exciting six boat Grand Final the North Yorkshire Police/Fire (Good to Talk) were declared as the winners, with second Shining Light (Stevo’s Shining Sailors) and 3rd Cargill Ltd (Cargill Cocoa Dragons). To watch a video of the Grand Final click on the image below:
More photographs and details of the results will be added to this report shortly.
After a very successful day we were delighted that the online total raised has already reached £97,300 so we are hopefully well on the way of a reaching our target of £120,000. We could not have done this without the fantastic work by everybody involved in the event, thank you for your time and enthusiasm. For their help in enabling us to stage the event such that all team sponsorship goes to charity we thank our three corporate sponsors:
As has been announced the 2027 Dragon Boat Challenge will be held on the 11th July.
David Fotheringham
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