ABREAST OF LIFE

WORDS Kim Newth PHOTOS Sarah Rowlands

On the Avon River, a group of gutsy women are paddling their hearts out as they get stuck into a sweaty hour of training. This is Christchurch’s breast cancer survivor dragon boat team, Abreast of Life (ABOL) Christchurch, putting in the hard yards ahead of the New Zealand Dragon Boat Association (NZDBA) national championships later this month at Lake Karapiro.

All share a determination not to let a cancer diagnosis define them. Being active and having fun with a bunch of other resilient women is what literally floats their boat. Out on the water, they look unstoppable.

Before today’s training, I meet ABOL’s co- captain Meri Gibson, sweep Janice Melville and coach Evan Roper. Janice has been on the team for 20 years and Meri is another long-time paddler, having joined in 2006. Evan has paddled for and coached various teams since 1993, (including a top Avonside Girls High squad for nine years).

“Last season was my first with ABOL,” Evan says. “I went in not being sure what they’d be capable of and was a bit soft on them at first. They soon put me right and told me I had to push them harder!”

At the same time, he’s very aware of how health challenges can impact on training. “I’m not a coach that cracks the whip and I want the women on the team to enjoy themselves too. There is a unique camaraderie and a special bond here that goes beyond the sport itself.” In competition terms, ABOL is a force to
be reckoned with after winning their group’s national team title in 2015, 2016, and 2017. They continue to perform strongly against New Zealand’s seven other breast cancer survivor teams.

“Per capita, we have the highest number of teams like this in the world,” says Meri, who is making a global impact as president of the International Breast Cancer Paddlers’ Commission (IBCPC). A former chair of the NZDBA, Meri is also associate vice-president of the International Dragon Boat Federation (IDBF) and lobbying hard to make dragon boating an Olympic sport. Seated in the middle of the boat, she’s one of the team’s powerhouse paddlers. Last year, she paddled for New Zealand in a senior B women’s team in Thailand that finished fourth in the 2km event.

“For me, there are very few sports where I can still be competitive at a high level without being an elite athlete. For all of us, it’s an opportunity to really step up and improve that fitness.”

Janice, who also serves as treasurer for the IBCPC, is ABOL’s sweep who steers the boat at training and on race days. Along with the physical benefits of being on the team, she says there are plenty of other wins from the experience that are not necessarily connected with racing.

“We don’t sit around discussing breast cancer but the support from the team in other areas of life is enormous,” Janice says.

ABOL has lost 25 of its paddlers to breast cancer. They’re the angels in the boat – one for every hard-working paddler out on the water.

abreastoflife.co.nz