Oldest videos of Dragon class yachts sailing
by Magnus Smith 8 Sep 2024 12:00 BST
Racing back in 1956. - Dragon World Championships © SW
The Gold Cup (the Dragon class' World Championships) has just begun, so that gives a great reason to delve into the video archive and see what is the oldest footage we can find of these keelboats. Most videos are from the UK, though of course the class is raced all over the world.
Our first offering is from Burnham-On-Crouch, 1946 and features other local river life too - thanks to Richard Blickman for this footage.
British Pathé usually provide our oldest video, but not this time; they are four years late, with this coverage of UK royalty's keenest Dragon sailor at an event in Lowestoft, 1950.
The Cowes Week, 1952 newsreel likes to focus on royal attendance, but we do get some good fleet shots too. Mid-way the coverage changes to Flying Fifteens.
We will skip the other Cowes videos as they are similar but less interesting. Instead we move away from the UK and go to the Rome Olympics, 1960 - this was sailed at Naples in the 5.5m class and Dragon.
Next up we have Sydney, 1962. Was this the National Championships?
Mexico Olympics, 1968 was contested in the Star, FD and Dragon. Beware: this video repeats twice, so once you reach half-way, you've seen it all!
A World Championships from the seventies now, in Hobart, 1971 brings our archive search to a close. This is the oldest video we have before digital footage takes over.
What of the other decades?
Do you know the location of any other Dragon videos from the analogue era prior to the year 2000? We would love to share these with other sailors. You can submit video links to us for immediate review.
This is why we had to insert an update, with all the new videos we discovered months after publishing this article:
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