Dragon Boating & Women With Breast Cancer

Since 1996, dragon boat racing by breast cancer survivors has grown rapidly with about 151 breast cancer survivor teams across the world including: 43 teams in Australia, 60 in Canada, I in China 1, 1 in Dubai, 4 from England, 2 in Italy, 1 in Malaysia, 8 from New Zealand, I in Poland, 2 from Singapore, 1 in South Africa, 1 Czech Republic and 26 in the United States.

WHAT IS THE ATTRACTION?

Len Minty, former couch for Survivors Abreast in Peterborough talked about the attraction of this sport for those who’ve survived breast cancer.
"One of the attractions of this sport is the learning curve is very steep—you can learn fast," said Len. "As my mentor Jim Farintosh said, it is not rocket science. Paddling in a dragon boat is not a really, really difficult skill. You learn very quickly—even if you’ve never paddled before—and half the women in the Survivors Abreast boat have never paddled before. But some of them look very good. I’m amazed how good they are."

"Second, all the women you race against are just like you. It’s not like some boat has 20 ex-Olympic competitor breast cancer survivors. No, no, no. It’s whoever comes out in an area gets on the team," said Len. "The teams we competed against were good not because the girls were unbelievably athletic. It’s because they were well-coached, well-organized and a lot of them were younger."

"But there’s something way more important. A lot of breast cancer survivors are people who’ve never had an athletic experience—one that’s safe, easy-to-learn, and vigorous. A race is only three-minutes, but it’s a hard three minutes. You get an experience you’ve never had before that you can only get through athletics, where you just go a lot deeper than you ever thought you could, and you become very proud of that.

"As I like to say, as a coach I took these women places they’ve never been—but it was places within," said Len.
"There were very few women on that team who had ever—willingly—put that much pain upon themselves. And that takes discipline, and that takes courage—both wonderful things."

"And the lasting part of all this is, if you can dig that hard and find this within you, well you just don’t have to do it in a boat. I mean, this thing transcends, it goes far beyond the lake and the boat. You carry those qualities and new strengths into the rest of your life where you can dig extra hard and be extra tenacious if you need to be. If you can do it in a dragon boat, you can do it other places. That’s what it’s really all about."

Len maintains that dragon boating for most people is enjoyable, but for breast cancer and other survivors, it’s special.

"With the breast cancer group, it’s different. It’s their way of getting to know other survivors and that is probably the most important part. You’re with people who truly understand what you’ve been through or are going through.”