Loughborough: Dragon racing boat worth £12,000 missing after floods

A £12,000 dragon racing boat has gone missing following flooding in Leicestershire.

The Soaring Dragons, based at Loughborough Boat Club, discovered three of their boats had broken free after Storm Henk arrived on Tuesday.

The team has since located two of the smaller boats but the largest of the three, a 40ft (12.1m) racing boat, is yet to be found.

The last reported sighting was near the City Ground in Nottingham.

The group's chairperson Ella Smith has been dragon-boating for eight years and said she had "never seen anything like" the floods that saw the boats become untethered.

One of the smaller boats was found at Sutton Bonington in Nottinghamshire and has since been retrieved, while an O1 Canoe was located at a private residence near Kegworth, Leicestershire, and is due to be returned.

The missing boat has capacity for 20 people and was reportedly last spotted on the River Trent heading past the City Ground in Nottingham.

Ms Smith said: "We think it's probably headed towards Holme Pierrepont. There's a sluice there at Colwick, so hopefully that's shut. It should be.

"We've had floods before, but nothing that's ever penetrated the top of our stands."

The flooding and the loss of the boats has disrupted training for the team, but other crews within the Standard UK League have invited members to train at their facilities.

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