What a wonderful team spirt!
by Lucia De Ranieri, IBCPC Vice President
Italian Dragon Sisters is a newbie member of IBCPC. I cannot imagine a more beautiful name for this composite team that joins together Italian paddlers from BC teams from the whole of Italy and that fully expresses the sisterhood and camaraderie between breast cancer paddlers.
This team was born a few months ago with the intention of giving the opportunity to any BC paddler to independently join this team to compete in dragon boating events and live the experience of a composite team. This team project was received with great enthusiasm by more than 100 BC paddlers throughout Italy, who will be able to choose to participate also in additional events to those planned by their own teams. In the occasion of each national and international event the Italian Dragon Sisters team will ask to the Italian BC paddlers if they are interested in joining the team and to be part of the crew for each event.
The 19th EDBF European Club Crew Championships scheduled next September in Ravenna (Italy) will be the first official sports participation of the team. Thanks to the agreement between IBCPC and EDBF, the teams’ members of IBCPC could participate in this edition of the event without having to be affiliated to the national federations, an extraordinary opportunity for IBCPC teams to paddle in a more competitive environment! Italian Dragon Sisters, taking this chance, will compete in both small dragon boat and standard dragon boat races.
It is an enormous pleasure and honor for me to be the drummer of this crew that will attend EDBF Championships in Ravenna.
We met for the first time at the training session on a very hot and sunny day in July in Italy. It was nice to find, even with paddlers from other teams, the spirit of camaraderie and the pleasure of being together, we had so much fun with a lot of laughs, spending time also out of the boat, having lunch and dinner together. It was also very interesting to share and discuss training and paddling techniques, and even if it was the first time that we had paddled together, a fantastic harmony was born.
We are all very excited to be part of this project and we look forward to paddle and compete together, Ravenna we are coming!!!
