Dragon Boat West

Our team is currently looking at different dragon boat regattas for 2006. We are considering the one at Lake Las Vegas in April 2006.

See the link to the regattas website:
http://www.facilitymarketing.com/lasvegas.htm

Has anyone competed at this event? What are your thots about this regatta? (ie. Officiating, organizing of the event, level of competition, type of and condition of the boats, the venue etc.)

The regatta is run by a group called FMG which has organized other regattas in the Prairies, Ontario & the states. I have heard mixed things about them. But I am curious to hear what paddlers on DBW think....

Thanks guys. Cheers.[/url]

Anything FMG is running is a sure event to AVOID.  Can you say anal retentive?  Do you like being treated like a 2 year old?  An example of how bad they are, if a paddle touches the ground (one of theirs of course) the team gets assessed penalty seconds (usually 10 seconds).  The event will not be enjoyable, unless Vegas is what you are really going down for :-)

Thanks Tiger.

I'm getting the same sentiment about FMG on the Eastern DB forums where they have had more experience with FMG-run events. They actually have a thread going that is totally bashing FMG. So it was kind of timely for me.

On your other point, I can't believe they would assess a 10 sec penalty for a paddle touching the ground!!! I hope you're just pulling my leg.... :D

The comments about FMG that I am picking up are:
- crappy organization
- crappy boats
- crappy treatment

The only one redeeming quality about the LV regatta is that you are in Vegas! We'll have to make a decision soon if we want to get in on the early bird rate. They have offered us a "special" rate for Canadian crews....

How much is the "special" rate?

They were indicating about $900 Cdn for Canadian crews if we registered by Nov 1. I think it goes up to $1200-$1500 after that.

It's a long haul until Alcan so we were looking for a decent festival as a tune up leading up to Alcan. The False Creek regatta & the Alcan regatta (in May & early June) preceding ADBF are fine, but Vegas seems like a great opportunity to do some racing & vacationing at the same time. But I am not aware of any teams from Vancouver that have raced there before and can provide me with some first hand info.

The race venue certainly looks appealing. Go to the venue's website & check it out:
http://www.lakelasvegasresort.com/

I found it amusing that if you go to the "Activities" tab of the website, they show paddlers in an OC6. Vegas is not someplace I would expect to see outriggers....

http://www.sddragonboat.com/

San Diego might have a race at that time.  That would be a good race.

oooh . . . . that looks like such a beautiful place for dragon boat photography . . . . :drool:

Arizona also has one March 18-19, 2006 in Tempe.  It's relatively close to Vegas as well.   :wink:

http://www.azdba.com

Seems they have a 2500m Sprint Challenge and 250m races as well.

Unfortunately the Arizona DB festival is run by FMG or that is what I hear so another one to be cautious about.

The thing to do is for a team to contact the festival they are interested in and find out who is coordinating the race part of a festival.  If you hear FMG then I would recommend not going (unless they relax a little which doesn't seem to be in their vocabulary) but that is speaking from history.

They say tigers can change their stripes so maybe FMG can change their ways.    :wink:

Thanks for the suggestion Kibble. I'm sure Tempe Arizona is nice, but the nice thing about doing a regatta in Vegas is that if the regatta sucked, at least you're still in Vegas!   :D

Here is an excerpt of our correspondence with FMG and the Vegas coordinator of the regatta:

Great to hear that you are interested in participating in the Lake Las Vegas Dragon Boat Festival. We are going into our second year for the Lake Las Vegas Dragon Boat Festival! We do accept registrations from International Teams, in 2005 we actually had a team from Winnipeg come down and race in the festival and expect them to come back again in the Spring along with a couple other teams from Winnipeg and possibly Ontario come out. Teams are welcome from all over Canada and the United States! While we are a recreational festival we do have plenty of “Competitive” teams register for our events, even in Las Vegas, we would never turn anyone away! I have attached the registration kit for the Lake Las Vegas Dragon Boat Festival for you to have a look at. The registration fee is normally $1,000 USD, but if you were able to register your team by November 15th I would be able to get you in for $900 CDN. Let me know if this is something that you would like to do. We are also in the process of trying to get a deal with some of the local hotels out in Las Vegas for our dragon boat teams that come from out of town. Once I get this information I would be more than happy to pass along to you and your team.

Anyways, thot I would share this with everyone on the Forum.

stay away from FMG and vegas (if you are a serious crew).  if your team is serious about racing, lake las vegas (i presume that's where it is) is NOT the venue.  our team raced their 2 years ago and i honestly can not recommend it as a competitive race site.  BUT vegas is vegas.  racing will occupy you during the day and vegas will keep you enterained in the evening.  if you are a golfer, you'll enjoy the golf out there too.

we use this race as a race for our more novice paddlers as the competition has not been that good.

as for FMG, they ran the tempe race last year.  i'd stay away from them.  we've actually elected not to race in a few races because they were running it.  i concur w/ the comments above and what you have received.  perhaps the most frustrating thing for our race managers was that instead of using numbers for the heats, they used letters.... what a debacle.

The captains of my team (Absolut Sake out of Seattle) are considering the Las Vegas race.

1. Early boating in warm weather! 2. It's near Vegas.

I forwarded a link of this forum topic to my captains and now they are concerned about the race. They would like some additional information regarding the FMG or the Las Vegas Race.

Could you let me know what Eastern DB forums you are referring to, especially forums that discuss FMG events?

Cheers,
Senna

The link to the current talk on festivals and FMG specifically:
http://www.network54.com/Forum/thread-135730-1128011140-1128829318-Festivals

The link to the all topics in the forum:
http://www.network54.com/Forum/135730

Since both west and east coast teams are giving lots of advice about staying away from FMG races I intend to do so!  Thanks for the tips.

Scott - Thanks for your comments. Much appreciated.
Karen - Thanks for providing Senna with those links that I was referring to in my earlier post.

With all the negative experiences and warnings about FMG run events, I don't think we'll be racing in Vegas. Hawaii Dragon Boat Festival in Aug 2006 is sounding pretty good!  Too bad it's not in March/April! :D

So the team that I coach heard back from FMG recently. FMG is indicating that they still want us to be at the LVDB Regatta in April and now they are willing to lower the entry fee to $800 Cdn. (Oh yeah,I use to be "Sun Tzu" but somehow got myself locked out of my profile while doing an update to it...) Also, they are offering reduced rates at the Lake Las Vegas Resort, but we haven't heard back as to what those rates are.

It looks like FMG is pretty desperate for teams to come out and they are probably scrambling to fill the race grid. Anyone got the scoop on the status of FMG or this particular regatta?

The comments and feedback that I got in my initial post helped us in making the determination not to go. However, if FMG is willing to reduce the fee even more and the hotel rates are cheap....it starts to get tempting. Even if it is an FMG run event, you are still in Vegas.

Is anyone else planning on racing in Vegas (Absolut Sake?) or know of any teams that have registered?

Thanks!

The Pirates were looking at Vegas until we read the small print about steerspersons , Teams are not allowed to use their own, no matter what kind of experience he or she has had! This was the response that I received from them after i queried this rule ,,,

Due to the way the lake is structured and the limited space on the lake that we are allowed to use, we are not allowed to use race markers for lanes.  The steerers that we provide line up in a manner that they have done in previous years.  This method works the best, it gives everyone a safe and fair race.  We would love to have your steerer and other steerers involved with the event, but because of the nature of the lake and the limitations that Lake Las Vegas has given us we supply steerers.

We are a Team and that includes our steersman ..so we voted no to this one .

 

Vegas sounded nice, but that just sounds ridiculously stupid...

can you imagine everyone fighting for the lighter steerspeople?

"We've got dibs on the anorexic midget!!"  :lol:

*edit* no offence to any anorexic ppl or midgets or any combination of the two

Just back from the Las Vegas Dragon Boat Festival.  And here's a quick summary of my impressions:

• Nice location
• Good competition
• Organizers need to get the paddle out of their ...

The Lake Las Vegas resort is a beatiful location and racing was fine on the lake.  It's a small venue so I can't see the festival getting above 25 teams without having to find a new location for the paddler's village.

There were some really good teams at the event from LA, Arizona, and the northwest states, plus VanCity Thunder and ourselves (TD Lightning) from Vancouver, so competition was good.  Some of the teams there were absolute beginners with only one or two practices before the races, but the divisions were set up pretty well to avoid having a novice team killed by a comp team.

We won all three of our races and took 1st in the Out-of-town Mixed Rec division.  There were only two other teams in the division, but both were near our level.  One of the teams was Portland Castaways who have come to Vancouver and Victoria in past years and the other was X-Generals.  VanCity had been placed in the Comp division.

The races themselves were well run (ie on time, no false starts), but on a very relaxed schedule - 20 minutes between heats.  There were only 15 teams at the festival.  The festival supplied steerspeople were okay, but there was nothing challenging about the course and no valid reason for insisting on only using festival supplied steerspeople.

FMG as event managers? Not pleasant.  I have never before had the pleasure of being treated like children at a festival by the organizers.  For example, one of the rules FMG has is that there is zero tolerance for drinking alcohol while you're racing.  If they smell alcohol on anyone's breath, the entire team would be disqualified. 

I don't particularly have a problem with the rule per se, most festivals have a rule about not allowing anyone to race if they appear to be under the influence of drugs or alcohol.  What I do have a problem with is the amazing number of times FMG felt they had to remind teams about this.  First they announced at the managers meeting.  Then they told the whole team as we lined up for our first race.  And the second race.  Plus they proudly announced the policy over the public address system at least 20 times during the day.

To me it seemed as though FMG felt they couldn't trust teams to respect the rule and felt they needed to beat it into everyone repeatedly.

The race announcer also stated a couple of times that if a boat ended up in the wrong lane, the team would be assigned a time penalty.  How is this possible when the festival supplies the steerspeople and the team has no control over where it goes!  I'm not sure whether it was a case of the announce using the same "script" he uses for every festival FMG does or he was really serious.  Can you say automatic protest if a penalty had been assigned?

But on the other hand, FMG was very proud of the fact that in "17 years of organizing, they had only allowed one protest."  That says to me that they don't run very competitive festivals.

The other comments posted here previously about penalties being assigned for unbuckling lifejackets or dropping paddles are all true.

The racing was fun and location was great, but I don't know that I want to go back to another FMG run event.

StraightLine.