As if an already troubled sport needed yet another poke in the eye and a whack to the shins.
That would be unlimited hydroplane racing which limps away from the Columbia River last Sunday. The already slim roster of race boats was reduced even more following the unplanned demolition derby of the Apollo Columbia Cup in the Tri Cities.
Eight of the exotic race boats arrived last week raring to go on the always exceedingly fast racecourse. Except low water in the northwest portion of the course forced officials to shrink the layout from 2.5 to 2-miles.
And that may have led in part to the fact that just five are off to Seattle’s 75th annual Seafair Apollo Cup on Lake Washington with the rest in various stages of disrepair following a series of crashes.
If there’s an obvious positive it’s that of the two incidents where drivers required medical attention, both walked out of on-site medical facilities.
There would be no repeat of the one and only fatality in the 56-year race history of the all-out pursuit of speed on the Columbia River with the death of Dean Chenoweth in 1982 driving the Miss Budweiser in a testing session accident.
It was Chenoweth’s death that changed the sport forever as boat owner Bernie Little later installed enclosed and improved cockpits complete with oxygen and other driver safety enhancements.
Flips and crashes are now more the norm than the exception as was evident this past weekend with the spectacular flip of the U-9 Beacon Electric driven by J. Michael Kelly in a Saturday heat race.
His teammate, Corey Peabody, in the U-1 Beacon Electric-sponsored boat, applied some salve of sorts by winning Sunday’s championship finale.
That prompted Peabody to tell the Tri-City Herald, “There is victory, along with defeat.”
The troubles continued Sunday in the first preliminary heat when the U-12 Graham Trucking, driven by Bobby King, got into some rough water and briefly went airborne. It was not to the extent of Kelly’s ride but enough that U-27 Miss Apollo and Dave Villwock drove across the U-12’s sponson.
The quick attrition last week of an already fading fleet of race boats parallels the plight of the sport in general.
Several generations ago in 1950, hydroplane racing put the Northwest on the national sports map. The exploits of the Slo-Mo-Shun boats set off a rivalry between hydro hotbeds Seattle and Detroit. Boats representing their respective cities earned the right to host the next year’s Gold Cup race — and that was a BIG deal at the time!
The unlimited boats with their roaring WW II V-12 Rolls-Royce engines spawned monster crowds who lined the shores of Lake Washington for races in Seattle. Hydros were our major league sport long before the Kraken, Mariners and Seahawks.
Communities like Coeur d’Alene, Chelan, Reno, Lake Tahoe, Las Vegas — and Tri Cities — became race sites. Most operated briefly, except for Tri Cities which just staged its 56th race.
The move to races out West each season made fields flourish as small-time teams suddenly appeared and would crowd the Columbia Park pits with a dozen or more boats.
But that was then and now, along with limited race teams, race sites have dwindled to half of what they once were. There are just five this year as Seattle and San Diego complete the schedule.
Unlike other sports, hydroplane racing, despite its spectacular and unpredictable nature, does not play well for television. And TV equates to sponsorship and advertising dollars.
There is simply too much time required between heats as crews fix and fine tune boats to package racing for TV as NASCAR has done. Kudos to SWX for once again broadcasting the Columbia Cup it its entirety, but viewers will not devote an entire day to watching.
Gone are the national bucks from Atlas Van Lines, Budweiser, Oberto or Tide detergent backing teams. Now sponsorships come from a few regional sponsors and companies whose owners have both deep pockets — and hydroplane racing in their DNA.
The question is, just how long does that last and will the next crash be the bottom falling out of the sport itself?
– Paul Delaney is a Cheney Free Press reporter and can be reached at [email protected].
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