Wendy Barrett is a breast cancer survivor who discovered the sport of dragon boating in 2007, just two years after a double mastectomy, and fell in love with the sport.  She joined the breast cancer Dragon Boat team “Abreast in a Boat” in her home town of Vancouver, Canada, which had started ten years earlier as a research project for women recovering from breast cancer. This organization is now worldwide with teams of women competing and paddling together for empowerment, encouragement and companionship in healing and staying healthy. It had been a break of some 40 years for Wendy since she had previously ‘messed about in boats’, as she put it, growing up rowing and sailing on the River Thames in England.  Discovering Dragon Boat Racing was a turning point in her life when she was healing from two surgeries and dealing with a lot of scar tissue. She gradually became more competitive joining new teams and learning to be the steerer, an all important role in dragon boating, and in 2015 steered her first competitive boat, the Granddragons. And she has also steered the women’s FCRCC Senior C team too.  In 2017 at the Canadian Nationals she won a place to compete in the Dragon Boat Club Worlds in Hungary 2018 clinching silver in the 2000 metre race as the steerer. Now at the age of 75, Wendy has been selected to steer the Canadian National Senior C women’s team to represent Canada in Thailand this August. And we’ll hear about her plans to compete in the Canadian Nationals in Vancouver to try and qualify for the Club World competition in France 2020.

Host: Chris Stafford

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