A respectable success for the Stadtwerke Gießen dragon boat team at the sixth international dragon boat festival in Frankfurt am Main: the SWG team paddled to second place in its class on 29 May. This was the third time in a row that the SWG team had competed in Frankfurt and were able to build on their successes from previous years with their current place on the winners' podium. In 2009, the mixed crew of Stadtwerke employees took third place and in 2008 they had already achieved second place.
In the dense starting field of the company cup with more than 50 teams, the 15 men and five women led by coach Bernd Zinkann even left the winning team of previous years behind with the team from Deutsche Bank Frankfurt. "The standard has risen noticeably again this time," commented team captain Oliver Lassika. "Fortunately, we were able to counter this with an improved performance." The SWG team completed a total of four heats on the 250 metre sprint course and, with their best time of one minute and eleven seconds, fell just a few hundredths short of the mark set by first-placed team Blue Energy.
The Dragon Boat Festival in Frankfurt is undoubtedly one of the highlights of the dragon boat year, but there are more to come. The SWG team will be paddling in the competitions in Offenbach on 20 June and in Marburg on 11 July. The SWG dragon boat will start in front of a home crowd at the city festival in Giessen on 22 August.