KOLLAM: Nadubhagom Chundan rowed by Pallathuruthy Boat Club (Tropical Titans) emerged the winners of the President’s Trophy Boat Race (PTBR), which is the 12th leg of the Champions Boat League (CBL), held in the Ashtamudi Lake in Kollam on Saturday. By winning PTBR, Tropical Titans have emerged the overall champions of CBL.
The event, which also hosted races for the smaller boats as part of PTBR, was inaugurated by Finance
Minister T M Thomas Isaac with N K Premachandran, MP, as the chief guest. Tropical Titans scored 173 points followed by Raging Rowers (86 points) and Mighty Oars (76). Tropical Titans rowed their snake-boat to glory in a photo-finish by clocking 4:33.69 minutes to edge past Karichal Chundan (Raging Rowers) rowed by Police Boat Club and Devas Chundan (Mighty Oars) by NCDC, Kumarakom, clocking 4:33.80 and 4:33.93 minutes respectively along the 1000-metre track in the evening’s final.
Nadubhagom also clocked the competition’s best finish (4:21.50 minutes) in the heats stage, thus earning ‘Nerolac Excel Fastest Team of the Day’ title and five extra points in the league besides the 10 points earned for finishing first in the finals.
Tropical Titans had earlier scored a triple hat-trick that had given them an invincible lead in the tournament. As many as nine snake-boats are competing in the 12-legged championship.
Amid high suspense over the CBL’s runners-up, Raging Rowers came second this evening by gaining a narrow edge over Mighty Oars who ended third. The victors had a lead of a mere 11 milliseconds over their immediate rivals, while the team that came third was just 13 milliseconds behind the runners-up.
Last week, at Kallada in Kollam, the penultimate round had left Mighty Oars share the third rank of the t
able with Coast Dominators when each team totalled 69 points. Today’s final witnessed a remarkably close race with Coast Dominators not figuring among the top three.The CBL, which was organised in 12 venues across five districts of the state, brought in huge crowds with the total number of viewers pegged at 22 lakh at the end of the championships that began on August 31 with cricket icon Sachin Tendulkar as the chief guest at the inaugural venue in Alappuzha’s Vembanad Lake. The success has prompted the government to make next year’s CBL pan-Kerala.