Racing began Tuesday at Liyu Lake in Hualien, Taiwan, where a Tulum dragon boat team of 20 paddlers is competing under the Mexican flag at the world championships.
The crew races as Puerto Aventuras Dragon Boat Club, the first dragon boat club founded in Mexico, with Tulum 101 by Inmobilia as its official sponsor for the trip. The 15th IDBF Club Crew World Championships run from August 29 to September 6, organized by the International Dragon Boat Federation and the Chinese Taipei Dragon Boat Association, with more than 5,500 athletes and supporters from 21 countries expected at the venue in Shoufeng Township, Hualien County.
Four years ago this sport barely existed as an organized discipline in Mexico. The club built its program around a marina in Solidaridad, roughly 30 minutes north of Tulum, with athletes living in Tulum and neighboring coastal communities. The boat that lines up at Liyu Lake this week is the only one carrying the country's colors.
Nine races across 200, 500, and 2,000 meters
Crews at the world championships are sorted by distance and by age. Racing covers 200, 500, and 2,000 meters across divisions ranging from Junior B and Junior A through 24U and University, Premier, and Senior A, B, and C. A Paradragon program runs alongside them.
A standard dragon boat carries 20 paddlers seated in pairs, a drummer at the bow calling the stroke, and a steersperson at the stern. Small boat classes cut that to 10 paddlers. The 200-meter sprint is over in well under a minute. The 2,000-meter race includes turns and rewards crews that can maintain their timing when the effort is no longer comfortable, and it is the event in which this club won its medal last year.
Liyu Lake gives organizers an eight-lane course, each lane 13.5 meters wide, on the largest inland freshwater lake in Hualien County. Viewing platforms and walking trails around the water hold an estimated 5,000 to 6,000 spectators. The lake has hosted the Hualien Pacific International Dragon Boat Festival since 2008.
The first three days, August 29 through 31, were devoted to arrivals, training runs, and registration, with the team managers' meeting held Monday afternoon. Competition opened Tuesday, September 1, and closes Sunday, September 6. Mexico is entered in mixed, men's, and women's categories across at least nine events. The race program circulated to team managers on August 8 alternates mixed and women's crews inside the same competition classes so paddlers get rest between heats.
How Mexico's first dragon boat club started with one coach
The club dates back to April 2022, when an outrigger canoe club in Puerto Aventuras was converted into a dragon boat program by François Blais, a coach with more than 25 years of experience in international paddling who had settled in the community. The first crew took the name Balam Ha, meaning "water jaguar" in Maya.
That crew traveled to the Pan American Club Crew Championships in Panama in 2023 with 21 paddlers, the first Mexican dragon boat team to enter the regional championship.
A second team followed, and it changed the character of the club. Samchak Kukulcán was founded by breast cancer survivors in the area and registered with the international commission that governs breast cancer paddling, a discipline with its own division at the world championship level. The club later organized Rosa Mexicano, the first dragon boat festival staged in Mexico, held at the Puerto Aventuras marina with crews from the United States, Canada, Venezuela, and Colombia.
A bronze medal in Montreal and a return to the world stage
In July 2025, the club entered the sixth Pan American Club Crew Championships at the Olympic Basin in Montreal, a regatta that drew more than 150 crews. It came home with a bronze medal in the Premier 2,000-meter event, the only Mexican club on the registration list.
Mexico has no national dragon boat circuit yet, so every international regatta is the benchmark. Whatever this crew posts in Taiwan stands as the country's result, built by a club that put its first boat in the water four years ago.
The Tulum dragon boat team that boarded the flight to Hualien
At the send-off event in Tulum, the names were read out one at a time. Among the paddlers who made the trip: Sandra, Jimena, María, Alejandra, Andrea, Olivia, Samantha, Brenda, and Diana. Then Fernando, José Daniel, André, Ian, Anuar, Omar, Luis, and Gustavo. François Blais travels with them as coach.
They train together at the club's marina in Puerto Aventuras and live in Tulum and communities across the region. Getting a full crew, a coach, and equipment from the Mexican Caribbean to eastern Taiwan is roughly 14,000 kilometers of logistics before anyone touches a paddle.
Más que Turquesa, and the company behind the uniforms
Tulum 101 by Inmobilia is the club's official sponsor for Taiwan. Before the flight, the company brought the athletes together in Tulum for a uniform handover and a press event, and the crew is racing in Hualien with the Tulum 101 by Inmobilia logo on its jerseys and its flag.
Azyadeh Saldaña, project manager for Tulum 101 by Inmobilia, framed the sponsorship in terms of the company's commitment to supporting Mexican sporting talent from Tulum. Speaking in Spanish, she said the company is not physically on the boat but has taken responsibility for helping the crew get there. She tied the decision to Más que Turquesa, an initiative by Tulum 101 by Inmobilia that the company describes as an effort to broaden Tulum's meaning beyond its coastline and its color, as well as its socially responsible work for the destination and the people who live in it.
Three decades of development, and a master plan in Tulum
Inmobilia has been operating for more than 30 years, has developed over 60 planned communities in Mexico, Belize, and Spain, and has placed development capital certificates on the Mexican stock exchange. In Tulum, it implements the Tulum 101 master plan, which includes the Ramia residential development of 71 lots, as well as Nido and 101 Park.
To make the trip happen, Tulum 101 by Inmobilia backed the club's participation in Taiwan as official sponsor for the world championship.
Racing continues at Liyu Lake through the weekend, and the finals close on Sunday, September 6. Whatever the scoreboard says by then will have been earned 14,000 kilometers from the marina where this club learned to move a boat four years ago.
What would it take for more athletes from Tulum and Quintana Roo to reach a world championship? Join the conversation and share your perspective with us on Instagram and Facebook at @thetulumtimes .
This image was generated or enhanced using artificial intelligence to improve its quality.
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