Are you a competitive athlete looking for a new challenge? Would you like to find an activity that fosters competition at any age/ability level? The Dragonboat Racing Association of Colorado (DRACO) would love to introduce you to the exciting sport of Dragon Boat Racing!

We are a non-profit organization affiliated with the Colorado Dragon Boat Festival. Our goal is to promote dragon boat racing locally, and to train competitive dragon boat teams to compete in national and international races. Dragon boat races are held all over the globe, in a wide variety of exotic venues. Of course, Denver also hosts its own prestigious Colorado Dragon Boat Festival each year – this year scheduled for July 21-22, at Sloan’s Lake (see www.cdbf.org). Start paddling now, and you could be racing w/ us in July!

DRACO hosts open paddling sessions weekly, generally each Saturday morning, that are free to all DRACO members (prospective members may also attend up to two sessions by paying a guest fee of $10/session – applied to the cost of membership if they join). 

At present, DRACO has the ability to conduct training sessions at two venues. During the boating season (May 1 through September 30), regular “on-the-water” outdoor practices are held at Standley Lake, in Westminster. Off season / early season indoor sessions are held in the swimming pool at the Wheat Ridge Recreation Center (4005 Kipling Street). To facilitate our off-season training, we recently constructed a training platform to simulate dragon boat paddling in a swimming pool. A YouTube video that chronicles the design and construction of our pool paddling simulator, and shows it in use at a recent practice session, can be seen at the following link: http://www.youtube.com/user/MichaelJBoyd#p/a/u/0/JGrd8jXteoM. We also have the benefit of three professionally-trained dragon boat coaches to assist in our training sessions.