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Lockdown life in China

An insight into quarantine in China with our National Representative Beirong (Bei) Xiong and her husband David Shanks.In total Bei and David spent 39 days in quarantine in Shanghai and then another 14 days when they arrived in Beijing. A total of 53 days. What would have been daunting for most people became an adventure for them both. Their Day 21 message to family and friends gives a glimpse of lockdown life.Thank you for all your updates from home. Yep, any amount of no news is good news these...

Medical Initiative

Medical initiative taken by the team UGO from Padova, Italy.We are very impressed by this initiative and encourage other teams to be as assertive in ensuring they receive the best medical care possible.Dragon Boat to start over after the illness: "U.G.O. – Unite Gareggiamo Ovunque ” team train with the “ Lymphatic Drainage Centre ” of Padova - Italy.In Italy we are lucky to have excellent centres for the treatment of oncological diseases, able to follow the patients with the highest prof...

Pink Warriors

Pink Warriors Panama Participation 6th Dragon Boat Race, Chinese New Year 2022We were very happy to have had the opportunity to participate again in a Festival organized by the Chinese Community in Panama. On this occasion the 6th Dragon Boat Race, commemorating the Chinese New Year, on February 12 and 13, 2022, in the Amador Causeway area in Panama City.Our participation was always under the established biosafety standards and the vaccination schedule required by the organizers, to remain in a ...

Rosa dos Ventos (Rose of the Winds)

In their own words we hear from one off our newest Brazilian teams.A strong, imposing name that means “safe direction for those who trust it” – that’s the spirit of our Dragon Boat paddling team in Londrina, Paraná (Brazil). The search for better quality of life was what motivated us to organize another project chapter of Dr. Don McKenzie, which also became a place for experience sharing amongst breast cancer survivors in Londrina.In 2020, after several lectures and meetings discussing ...

Rosas del Plata, Tigre Paddlers

Rosas del Plata, Tigre paddlers journey to Bariloche to compete in the women's division.The New Zealand BCS 2023 Festival is coming soon! And we are very excited with the final countdown (a little under one year and we will fly to another continent, to meet other Pink Paddler mates from all around the world).In the meantime, we are training hard and we try to participate in as many Argentinian Dragon Boat races as possible. There are few opportunities here because the Dragon Boat sport is fairly...

South East USA

The newest team from the South East of the USA shares their paddling story.Better Watch Out: There’s a new team in town and it’s hell.The Southeast USA Region is going to be “Hell” to recon with this year. Our newest team, Hell Gate Sea Dragons is the first and only dragon boat team in Martin County, Florida, launching in February 2020 on the St. Lucie River in Palm City Florida. Even though COVID hit us and we all had to pause our water activities, this new team stayed together by kayak...

The Bahamas and Trinidad & Tobago

Outreach in The Bahamas and Trinidad & TobagoThe opportunity to undertake an outreach certainly came very much out of the blue with a request from the PanAm Dragonboat Federation who have been involved in the establishment of the very new Bahamas Chinese Dragonboat Association (BCDBA). BCDBA have been gifted eight Dragonboats to commemorate the 25th Anniversary of the Chinese-Bahamas Association. The gifted boats were due to arrive on 8 May and as part of that we were asked to be involved in...

The next IBCPC Festival!

So many of you are looking forward to the IBCPC Festival in New Zealand next year.But what is going to happen with the next one, where will it be held?In the past, we have held a meeting at the festival, for those who are interested in being the next host. Then once the bids have been evaluated the announcement is made via email/social media.For the 2026 Festival, we will be doing it a little differently. We will be hosting virtual workshops for those interested or considering hosting the next F...

Update from France

I am sending you a few updates about the "United Ladies" river trip we have organized for this summer in France.As you might know, the adventure we set up in August has met with a huge success, registrations were full only 24 hours after we opened them. As organizers, we felt very frustrated to "refuse" or swipe to the waiting list so many late registration enquiries.The United Ladies adventure is one of those we'd like to share with as many persons as possible. So, we've been working on organiz...

Welcome to Croatia

We welcome our 33rd country, Croatia, to the IBCPC family and thank Buba Babic (who lives in Canada) for her tenacity to travel back to Croatia with the determination to form this team in her home country.Newbies all the way – a story of Croatia’s first BCS DB!!!!I am sure all of you know or remember how it feels to be a newbie: someone who has never done something and has no expectations, no idea and no clue about what is going to happen! They just know that it (something) IS going to happe...

Paddlers in the Pink Singapore

by Katherine GohLike many dragon boat teams all around the world, the Singapore Breast Cancer Foundation - Paddlers in the Pink team had to put a stop to our routine training sessions at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020. As restrictions ease in early 2021, the team was able to gradually return to a semblance of normality. We started with 4 paddlers and gradually progressed to 8. We took a setback in April this year when we had to stop paddling again due to heightened awareness of community ...

Appointment of National Representatives

Brazil: Larissa Lima and Angelina CarapelloAngelina Carapello...

Country Liaison

In addition to being the National Rep for Germany we have appointed Svenja as Country Liaison to Austria. As the team numbers grow in Germany, we will be looking to also appoint an additional NR....

De l'Allier à la Loire, United Ladies 2021

We are resharing the article about the paddle on the Loire last year as we mistakenly clipped it short.United ladies 2021 is the challenge taken up by 31 paddlers from 5 to 8 August. This superb collective experience, which combines surpassing oneself, group cohesion and immersion in the heart of nature, took the paddlers from Vichy to La Charité sur Loire.Impossible to paddle on dragons’ boats, too rigid and fragile for the sandbanks of the Allier and the Loire. So, it was in a c9 canoe that...

Events

Paddlers Abreast CanadaFor the timetable of breast cancer events during the regatta check out the Paddlers Abreast Canada Facebook page.Concord Pacific Dragon Boat Festival July 2022...

From the desk of the President

March 2022It seems strange to be wishing you a happy New Year at this time but this is our first newsletter for 2022. So, on that basis I wish to extend to you all the very best wishes for 2022 and all that unfolds in it. The year certainly started off with a lot of changes globally and particularly in relation to the pandemic as we are slowly but surely starting to see the worlds borders reopen. Restrictions remain for many countries and it would seem that very few are immune whether it is self...

Greetings from Austria and Germany

By Svenja Franke-BruhnThe Vienna Pink Dragons are sending their best wishes for a great paddle season around the world. Of course, it is not easy everywhere. We are fully aware of that, coming slowly out of winter here and the Covid case numbers rising more than ever. We have had a few paddlers braving the cold and short days. However, spring seems not to be too far away and we had a great paddle in early February: no wind, hardly anyone else on the water and the sun shining bright. Great for th...

New Countries

We commend the work being done by Dubravka (Buba) Karlovic- Babic of Edmonton, Canada. She has been travelling to her native Croatia and working with local water sport residents to establish a breast cancer team there. She has even succeeded in securing a boat for this new team. We are working with Buba in planning an outreach clinic to Croatia to assist in building the sport there. We will also visit other countries in Europe that do not have breast cancer teams yet or who are in the throes of ...

New Teams

We would never have anticipated or comprehended that we would be helping to develop or welcome new teams to the IBCPC family during a pandemic, but we have. It is so exciting to see that regardless of this awful disruption to our lives that life continues and that we are at the forefront of sharing the knowledge of breast cancer dragon boat paddling and growing an awareness of our sport enforcing that our lives are all the better for it, proving that “EXERCISE IS MEDICINE”.We welcomed IBCPC ...

Order of Canada

We all know Dr. Don McKenzie, or Dr. Don as he is affectionately known to us for his work in research 27 years ago into why breast cancer survivors should participate in upper body exercise and how this led to the establishment of breast cancer dragon boat teams across the globe.We congratulated Don on our Facebook page as soon as we heard about his award being official, and we endorse those same congratulations again now. We had a little bit of inside running as our President, Meri Gibson was a...

The Association "U.G.O. - Unite Gareggiamo Ovunque Onlus" Padova, Italy

An update written by the UGO team.UGO - Unite Gareggiamo Ovunque (which means: United we Compete Everywhere), is a team born in June 2015 when a pilot project was launched within the Breast Unit of the IOV (Istituto Oncologico Veneto) on the initiative of a psycho- oncologist who strongly believed in the Canadian project of Dr. McKenzie. At the end of the 3-month experimentation, the 12 women who had been involved were so passionate about the sport itself that they decided to continue the experi...

Update from the European Dragon Boat Federation (EDBF)

At the last EDBF Ordinary Congress held on 28th August 2021 Claudio Schermi was re-elected as EDBF President for his 2nd term in office and Paola Pochesci was re-elected as chair holder of the EDBF Women in Sport Commission. As chair holder, this time, Paola was asked to present candidates for the position of members of the Commission.Paola noted that the Dragon boat activities are restarting after these pandemic times as is every sport all around the world, and as such she would like to give a ...

Update from the European Dragon Boat Federation (EDBF)

At the last EDBF Ordinary Congress held on 28th August 2021 Claudio Schermi was re-elected as EDBF President for his 2nd term in office and Paola Pochesci was re-elected as chair holder of the EDBF Women in Sport Commission. As chair holder, this time, Paola was asked to present candidates for the position of members of the Commission.Paola noted that the Dragon boat activities are restarting after these pandemic times as is every sport all around the world, and as such she would like to give a ...

A Historic Regatta Storica

September 5th 2021 will be a day I will never forget. It was the day my mother and I had a breakthrough heart-to-heart. It was the last day of my 30s. Above all, it was the day that enabled me to see how being part of the Vienna Pink Dragons has been instrumental in my mother’s physical and mental recovery from breast cancer and how it has positively affected our whole family.As I stood next to my father, watching my mother along with about 80 other Pinkie’s paddle down the Grand Canal in th...

A Memorable Flower Ceremony

Mark Warren is a dragon boat paddler from Washington, DC who, while attending the Eastern Regional Dragon Boat Association (ERDBA) festival two years ago, decided to stop and pay attention to the flower ceremony honoring and remembering breast cancer survivors. Mark was absolutely taken with the inspiring event.This year, Mark wrote to Great White North the Canadian festival producers to see whether or not it would be ok to play his bagpipes at the ceremony held recently at Lake Mercer in Prince...