Jamaica through to Dragon Boat Festival final

JAMAICA’s OPEN and mixed teams at the fourth annual Bahamas International Dragon Boat Festival yesterday paddled their way into today’s seeded finals of the 200-metre events at Goodman’s Bay in Nassau, Bahamas.

Jamaica’s open team ended the day with victory, clocking 1:03.95 after earlier finishing third in their first-round heat with 1:05.17. The mixed team also won their second heat after posting 1:04.79 in the first round.

All teams will be informed overnight of their aggregate times, which place them into seeded groups of top and bottom halves for today’s finals.

The teams to beat in the open division top-half are Buoys and Gulls and Nauti Crew. However, the Jamaicans, in their first overseas international, said they learned a lot on the first day and will be better this afternoon.

“We will only get better with each race,” said captain Jason McKay. “We are away and won our second heat.”

“The lane draw and time of day is also important because of the changing currents. For example, our mixed team clocked a faster time than our open team in the first round,” McKay pointed out.

Jamaica are among 27 teams from North America and the Caribbean. Jamaica fields two teams in the open and mixed-team 200-metre events, 17 competitors, 13 male and four female.

Canadian coach, Anthony Cao, who went out with the Jamaican team for the first of two training sessions, agreed with McKay, saying despite needing “a few tweaks”, they “looked pretty good”.