Sport: Yankee Trick

Every game has its own ethics. In baseball, it is permissible to rattle a pitcher by making a noise; but a golfer who shouts when his opponent is putting is a boorish cheat. In football, it is ethical to render an adversary senseless by hard tackling; it would be easy but unfair to win a rubber of bridge in the same way. A question of ethics in sport was internationally discussed last week after the conclusion of the Harmsworth Cup (motor boat) races in Detroit.

Kaye Don, British automobile and motorboat driver who holds the world speed record for motorboats, had entered Miss England II*.

Garfield Arthur (“Gar”) Wood had entered his Miss America IX. His brother George was to drive Miss America VIII, the boat which won the Harmsworth Cup in 1929 but which is obviously outclassed by later models. Before the race, silver-haired, sharp-faced Gar Wood was confident he would win. He was quoted as saying that Kaye Don would learn something when “George gives him the wash.”

In the first heat, Miss England II won by more than a mile. Her speed reached no m. p. h. on the straightaway, averaged 89:913 m. p. h., broke the race record by more than 12 m. p. h. and made it clear that she would win the Cup next day unless something unexpected happened. When the time came for the second heat next day. Gar Wood asked for a 45-min. postponement to repair his gas tank. Kaye Don refused—because he would have had to drain his oil and reheat it, which would have taken more than 45 minutes and perhaps made it impossible to finish the race before dark. Gar Wood repaired his gas tank as best he could and the three boats got ready for the start.

A rule of the Harmsworth Cup races states that any boat which starts more than five seconds before the gun shall be disqualified. Gar Wood’s boat crossed the starting line nine seconds before the gun —the first time he has ever crossed the line too soon in five Harmsworth Cup races. Just behind him, seven seconds ahead of the gun, came Miss England II. Safely behind both was Miss America VIII, which crossed the line just after the signal, sure to win the race since both the others were disqualified. A moment later, the 500,000 people who were watching saw Miss England pitch dangerously, then capsize at 80 m. p. h. and sink. Kaye Don and two mechanics were pulled out of the water, uninjured (TIME, Sept. 14).

Gar Wood was quoted as follows in an interview after the races: “Sure I’m happy. I asked for a postponement of the start. . . . My request was denied and it made me angry. When Eddie Edenburn, chairman of the race committee, told me Don would not agree … I told him . . . I was coming down the river and make a false start purposely. I told him when I did, Don likely would follow me. If he did, I knew it meant disqualification of both Miss America IX and Miss England II but there was still Miss America VIII. … If Don wanted to play that way with me, all right. I figured I could out-smart him. . . .”

Said Gar Wood, at a luncheon given for Don next day: “We did not know that we had gone over the line more than five seconds ahead of the gun until we were signalled with a red flag at the judges stand. . . .” But when confronted by interviewers, Wood began to weep. He said: “We wanted to get over first. . . . I’ve been racing for years and we’ve done the best we could to carry the American flag on our boats in a sportsmanlike way. . . .” He said he had been misquoted, misunderstood, misjudged.

Other reports conflicted with Gar Wood’s second-day statements. Chairman Eddie Edenburn of the race committee said: “I was at Gar Wood’s boat well before the race. . . . Gar was incensed. … He told me he was going to cross the line before the gun. . . . There was no time [to warn Don]. . . .” Spectators said Wood, shouting to watchers on the bank, had described his start as “an old Yankee trick.”

Observers unfamiliar with motorboating etiquet wondered whether, even if Wood had tricked Don into a false start, he had broken boating etiquet. Observers familiar with motorboating ethics were not so perplexed. They called the trick unsporting.

The day after Miss England’s mishap the Detroit race officials reconsidered their intention of cancelling the third heat. George Wood ran Miss America VIII slowly over three laps of the 30-mile course. But the name of Gar Wood’s 13-year-old son, Garfield Arthur Wood Jr., in whose name Miss America VIII was entered, was not engraved on the tall, gold Harmsworth Cup. Whether or not it will be is up to the Yachtsmen’s Association of America which will meet to ponder the problem soon. The crew of a tugboat salvaged Miss England II. Her stern was cracked apart, her deck ripped off but her Rolls-Royce motors were practically undamaged. Her designer, Fred Cooper, declared she could be patched up and. with bigger motors, be made capable of 150 m. p. h. She was taken unrepaired to Toronto and placed, an equivocal exhibit of international sport, on view at the Canadian National Exhibition.

*Owned by Lord Wakefield, Kaye Don’s backer. Miss England II was originally built for Major Sir Henry Seagrave who was thrown out and killed when his boat hit a submerged log on Lake Windermere, England, in June 1930.