Sport: Tarnished Gold Cup

All at once, the Detroit River came alive. Flippant rooster tails of spray arced high as six hopped-up speedboats zippered the straightaway and skittered hell-bent for trouble toward the first turn of the Gold Cup race for unlimited hydroplanes. The last heat boiled into a catfight between two river belles—Miss Thrijtway, a neat cream, orange and white number from Seattle, and Miss Pepsi, a Detroit brawler all tricked out in red, white and blue.

Ripples & Loops. Miss Thrijtway and her owner, Seattle Grocer Willard Rhodes, were out to settle an old score. Last year on Lake Washington, Rhodes figured he and Miss Thrijtway had the Gold Cup won, watched his driver, Bill Muncey, given a victory .dunking, only to learn later that Detroit’s Gale V had taken first on corrected scoring. Now, Miss Thrijtway once more finished the final heat in front.

Seattle had its revenge. Rhodes and Muncey headed for the winner’s circle. They got there just in time to hear Miss Thrijtway disqualified for hitting a buoy. Bellowing with rage, Muncey swarmed up the framework of the judges’ stand. It was bad enough to hear that he had been done out of the Gold Cup again; it was unbearable to hear that the new winner was Detroit’s Miss Pepsi.

Most unlimited hydroplane jockeys nurse an unlimited hatred for Miss Pepsi. Their own heavy craft are designed to skim the surface, bouncing along on three small hunks of hull. Air flows under the almost flat bellies, and the boats try their best to take off. Almost any bump can send them soaring. In a qualifying run for last year’s Gold Cup, Driver Lou Fageol rode Slo-Mo-Shun V into an airborne loop, parted company with his boat, got beaten up so badly when he slapped the water that he quit racing on the spot. In a qualifying run with Slo-Mo IV last week, Driver Joseph Taggart ran into the rippling wake of a small patrol boat, barely survived the wreck of his hydroplane.

In contrast to the precarious ride of the other boats, Miss Pepsi displaces water like a Sunday speedboat, is kicked along by two 1,500-h.p. Allison aircraft engines, and throws a rough wake that is awesome indeed. “Riding behind her,” says one driver, “is like a trip behind the Queen Mary.” To make matters worse, Miss Pepsi’s driver, Chuck Thompson, has the quaint habit of taking her for a spin ten minutes before the starting gun, a tactic that is sure to roil the course.

Counterattack. Once they stopped to catch their breath, Muncey and Rhodes mounted a counterattack. Miss Pepsi, not

Miss Thrijtway, had demolished the buoy, they claimed. What’s more, the television movies would prove it. Nonplused, the racing committee finally passed the buck to the American Power Boat Association, which may take up to 60 days to decide on a winner. By that time, the Gold Cup could be tarnished for fair. Roly-poly Horace Dodge, playboy heir to the Dodge car fortune, claims that he was illegally kept from qualifying for the cup in Dora My Sweetie. He has a court order requiring the race committee to show cause why the Gold Cup should not be called no contest.

Just about the only competitor who stayefl out of the argument was Texan Williim T. Waggoner, representing the Seattle Yacht Club. When the last heat started, he thought he had the race in the bag. His Maverick was not doing well, but his Shanty I was running in front. Suddenly it belched to a crawl—out of the race with a broken supercharger. Heir to a $300 million cattle-and-oil fortune, Bill Waggoner had suddenly run out of the one element of hydroplane racing that is not for sale: luck. “A man has to be a goddamn fool to get mixed up in this business,” he muttered sadly.