The Ireland team competing at this week’s World Dragon Boat Championships in Germany including Rachel Reid (fourth right)
BY RICHARD BULLICK
FORMER women’s rugby international Rachel Reid from Belfast is making history this week as she competes at the World Dragon Boat Racing Championships in Germany as a member of the Ireland team.
This is Ireland’s debut appearance at the World Championships, organised by the International Dragon Boat Federation, and the evergreen Reid, a member of the acclaimed Lagan Dragons club, is the first person from Northern Ireland to represent the Irish team.
Ireland are due to compete in the 2000-metre race in Brandenburg on Tuesday afternoon (4.00pm), with the first race in the 200 metres being at 12.15pm on Thursday and 500-metre event getting underway on Saturday (1.00pm) with all races streamed on the IDBF website.
The 53-year-old civil engineer, who works for Doran Consulting, is probably best known for her exploits in the oval ball code, as a teak-tough flanker who won 24 caps for her country and subsequently served as Ireland team manager.
However, Reid reveals that her experience of dragon-boating stretches back more than three decades to 1991, albeit “it was sporadic involvement in those early years – an annual regatta through work and occasional charity fun days.”
Rachel Reid (right) with her former Cooke rugby captain Frances Doherty, who introduced her to Lagan Dragons
She spent a decade as an abrasive back row forward for the Ulster women’s rugby team, winning two interpro titles and captaining the team in white for a couple of seasons along with helping Belfast club Cooke to All Ireland League and Cup success.
Unusually for a forward, Reid was an accomplished place-kicker and she accumulated 66 points during a six-year international career, which began in 1997 and saw her don the green jersey for the following year’s World Cup and again at the 2002 tournament in Barcelona.
The always well-organised Rachel later became Ireland team manager, a vital logistics role, for a four-year period which included the 2010 World Cup in England, and she also captained the Irish senior mixed tag rugby team in a two-Test series against Australia.
So Reid’s rugby credentials are impeccable but many who would know her primarily from that sport may be surprised at the extent to which competing on the water has actually been her lifelong love, thanks in no small measure to attending Belfast’s Methodist College.
She was captain of Methody’s girls rowing club and won an Irish title in the women’s intermediate fours in 1990, a year in which she also competed for the Ireland Under 18 team at the Home Internationals.
Rachel went on to become an Irish champion in the women’s senior fours and represented Ireland in the 1992 Home Internationals when they had the outstanding achievement of defeating England, Scotland and Wales.
Another major rowing highlight for Reid, who also spent a decade coaching at her alma mater Methody, was competing for Northern Ireland at the 1994 Commonwealth Championships in Canada.
Dragon-boat racing is the fourth sport which Rachel Reid (sixth from right) has represented Ireland at internationally
Lagan Dragons was formed just over a decade ago, predominantly by and for those affected directly or indirectly by breast cancer, and that remains an important focus for the award-winning club and its 100 members.
Although Rachel herself isn’t a breast cancer survivor, the cause is very close to Reid’s heart as her good friend and fellow former Ulster and Ireland wing forward Rosie Gallagher Stewart sadly died of the disease in 2003 at the tragically young age of 33.
Reid joined Lagan Dragons just over seven years ago and became head coach in September 2021, drawing upon extensive paddle-sport coaching experience from Sea Cadets and also that decade coaching the Methody rowers.
Her husband Gordon Reid, who has served on the Northern Ireland Sports Forum, has competed at the World Masters Rowing Championships, and has also a sailing background, so much of the couple’s life revolves around the water!
The Irish Dragon Boat Association (IDBA) was formed 15 years ago and is affiliated to the world governing body, IDBF. An Ireland team competed at the 2016 European Championships in Rome and then the corresponding event in Brandenburg two years later.
Still very fit and an exceptionally competitive person by nature, Reid has earned selection for Ireland’s 10-seat Women’s Senior A crew for the over-40 age group, having come through a series of trials which began in November 2024.
That was followed by monthly trials and training sessions before the final trials to select the World Championships crew took place in March, with the chosen squad having had a further five training weekends in Carlow between April and heading to Germany last weekend.
Reid is the sole Ulster representative in an Ireland team of 12 – which features 10 paddlers, a helm and a drummer – comprised of seven women from the sport’s hotbed of Carlow, two from Kilkenny, one Dublin and one county Clare.
She’s serious about the sport obviously but, in true rugby tradition, and especially in keeping with her old friend Rosie Gallagher, one of Reid’s important tasks before heading to Germany was sorting ‘song-books’ for her Ireland dragon-boating team!
The 17th edition of the IDBF’s World Dragon Boat Racing Championships began on Monday and runs until next Sunday at Brandenburg in Germany, with free live-streaming of races, and the hashtag of #WDBRD2025 is being used.
Rachel Reid (bottom row, third left) preparing for the World Dragon Boat Championships as part of the Ireland team
