Paddling for a good cause: Dragon Boat Race round-up
Posted on: 8 Jul 2025
This weekend saw teams from across Nottinghamshire gather together to take to the River Trent for our 2025 Dragon Boat Race event. The unpredictable weather didn’t dampen spirits as there were smiles all around with a sense of community and a touch of competitiveness amongst the teams.
Families and friends joined in the fun, cheering on every team that took to the water. Places for first, second and third were given to those racing in the gold final race, and ‘best dressed’ was awarded to the most imaginative of the teams who donned costumes on the day.
A huge congratulations to all participants who took part—you gave it everything and made the day unforgettable! Each team has helped raise £40,000, including Gift Aid for Nottingham's NHS hospitals.
Our top fundraising teams for the weekend are:
- Top Staff Team – The Go Getters £2570
- Top Corporate – Ramtech Dragons - £1396
- Top Community – RRR & Friends - £1893
Two special gold duck trophies were also awarded to The Go Getters and The Heart Attackers who raised the most on Saturday and Sunday, respectively.
One of the most creative outfits came from the Nightingale Ward team who dressed all in orange and had a wide range of infectious diseases on the backs of their T-shirts!
Catarina Galambas, who is a Staff Nurse on the ward, spoke about why the team decided to get involved this year: “The Nightingale Ward at City Hospital decided to take on the Dragon Boat Race to raise awareness around infectious diseases. A large majority of our patients are nursed under strict isolation for a prolonged period of time, so their hospital stay can be very lonely. Through our fundraising efforts, we hope to use the money to make their time on the ward as comfortable as possible.”
Another group who got involved in fundraising was the Haematology Daycase unit at City Hospital. Their team, the Daycase Ducks, took part in the event on Sunday and weren’t hard to miss with their eye-catching duck hats.
Megan Kearney, Haematology Nurse, took on the event last year as part of a different team but wanted to get a team together once again to raise money for their area. She told us: “I was involved in the Toghill team last year in the Dragon Boat Race, and thoroughly enjoyed it! So this year I was determined to get a team together to represent Haematology Daycase.
“As a unit we have wanted to get to get our outpatient department repainted for a few years now; and using the money fundraised we can now do this. There a lot of staff members from Daycase partaking in the race – however, the majority of the team members are from outside the unit. And even outside the trust! We have used social media to push fundraising, as well as word of mouth, posters and a bake sale!”
It wasn’t just staff teams who took part during the weekend - businesses from across the East Midlands grabbed an oar and hopped in a boat as well. These included Ramtech Electronics, DePUt Synthes, Agilitas, Balfour Beatty, NRA Roofing & Flooring Services, Minster FB, National Grid and Ikano Bank.
A huge thank you also goes to our incredible sponsors, Ikano Bank and Agilitas IT, whose generous support made a big difference to participants and supporters.
Once again, our event would never have been a success without our friends at Notts Anaconda Dragon Boat Club. Without their expert guidance, on-the-water support and unwavering encouragement throughout the day, our event wouldn’t have been possible.
We’re also delighted to announce that next year’s event dates have already been arranged, and we’ll be returning to the Victoria Embankment for more paddling action on Saturday 4th and Sunday 5th July 2026.
If you’d like to be one of our first teams to sign up, please click here.
A huge thank you to everyone who made the event the best it could be, and we hope you all had an amazing time. We can’t wait to see you all next year!