A Dreamworks Animation short set between How to Train Your Dragon and How to Train Your Dragon 2.
The teens of Berk are preparing for their annual dragon races, while reminiscing on how this new tradition came to be.
Tropes in this short include:
- The Cameo: Gustav appears in the crowd shots.
- Changed My Mind, Kid: Fishlegs refuses to join in on the dragon races at first, because he wants to do the old traditon of the Regatta boat race. Unusal for this trope, Fishlegs changes his mind because he has no choice, as Meatlug accidentally sinks the boat they built together.
- Cheaters Never Prosper:
- Snotlout tries to complete the dragon race after accidentally injuring Astrid, only for Hookfang to fly into a tree branch and knock him off.
- Team SnotNuts nearly wins with their fake black sheep, only for Fishlegs to show up with the real one. Tuffnut then blows the ruse by nuzzling the fake black sheep, getting black paint all over himself.
- Competition Freak: The dragon races begin because the teens (except Hiccup) turn herding sheep into a competition.
- Crippling the Competition: Snotlout breaking Astrid's arm may have been an accident, but he does try to take advantage and steal the black sheep while she can't stop him.
- Faint in Shock: The black sheep, upon seeing Hookfang and Stormfly bearing down on it, starts screaming like a goat before fainting.
- Foreshadowing: Ruffnut and Tuffnut talking about their super secret plan, which turns out to be their plot to cheat.
- Half the Man He Used to Be: One of the rules of dragon racing involves tearing a sheep in half. Half a sheep means half a point.
- Jump Scare: Tuffnut's horrifying war paint causes this in Astrid, and unsuspecting viewers.
- Nigh-Invulnerable: The sheep Snotlout uses to test his sheep catapult survives dozens of times the abuse a normal sheep could take. Astrid lampshades this as she watches it smash through another roof.
- No-Respect Guy: Hiccup has this in spades throughout the flashback; absolutely nobody listens to him when he's the acting chief.
- Noodle Incident: Gobber has apparently put his hook through his own head. He doesn't advise doing it.
- Portmanteau: The team names, SnotNuts and HicLegs.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Stoick accepts that the entire village wants to do dragon races instead of the Regatta, and adds his own bit of flair to it.
- Shamu Fu: Just as Stoick says that the Hooligan Tribe needs something to fight against, lest they fight each other, two Vikings drive the point home by running by while smacking each other with fish.
- Stealth Hi/Bye: Fishlegs suddenly emerges behind Hiccup after Stoick puts him in charge of the Regatta.
- Suddenly Speaking: Silent Sven, previously The Voiceless, has broken his silence. His loud, high-pitched voice annoys his sheep into running away, and also everyone else.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Unlike many other instances in the franchise where a dragon rider crashes, Astrid breaks her arm when her and Stormfly crash during the first dragon race and spends the rest of the flashback with her arm in a sling.
- Throw the Dog a Bone: So Snotlout didn't win the dragon race (Hiccup and Fishlegs did), he didn't invent the dragon races (Tuffnut did), and gets caught cheating (along with the twins). But he did invent the sheep launcher, and happily uses it to shoot Tuffnut when the latter mocks him.
- Unsportsmanlike Gloating: Snotlout dives headfirst into this when it seems like his team won the dragon race, annoying Hiccup, who was trying to be a Graceful Loser.
- Vomit Indiscretion Shot: Meatlug gets seasick while on the boat she and Fishlegs built for the Regatta, and pukes lava onto the deck. Unsurprisingly, the boat sinks seconds later.
- Whole Episode Flashback: The bulk of this short is spent focusing on the events leading to the first dragon race, which is just after Defenders of Berk. The Framing Device for the flashback happens in a later dragon race, just before Race to the Edge.
