Sport: Hotsy Totsy

America’s oldest motorboating trophy, the Gold Cup, is a gold-plated silver urn that looks like an inverted Napoleon’s hat. It was put up in 1904 by Manhattan’s Columbia Yacht Club, to give the “monkey-wrench sailors” something to race for. Yachtsmen still think motor-boatmen are crazy. But there are enough mechanically-minded U. S. citizens, willing to spend $50,000 for a boat and 500 hours a year tinkering with it, to make the Gold Cup race one of the most exciting sport events in the U. S.

In 1904, 23 m.p.h. was breakneck speed for a “naphtha launch.” Last week, when the 37th Gold Cup race was staged at Northport Harbor on Long Island Sound, two entries boasted speeds of nearly 100 m.p.h.: Lou Fageol’s So Long (97.451 m.p.h. over a measured mile) and George Cannon’s Gray Goose III (92.309 m.p.h.). Motorboats have gone faster (Sir Malcolm Campbell’s Bluebird II hit 141 m.p.h. last year), but for a Gold Cup boat, limited to engines of 600 to 732 cu. in. piston displacement, 97 m.p.h. was going some.

Whether So Long or Gray Goose III could stand up for 90 miles (three 30-mile heats over a two-and-a-half-mile oval) was the question among the 100,000 spectators who lined the Gold Cup course last week. Among the experts, the favorites were Zalmon Simmons’ My Sin, winner last year with an average speed of 66 m.p.h., and Herbert Mendelson’s brand-new Notre Dame, successor to the original Notre Dame that won the 1937 race. Sentimentalists hoped that Gar Wood Jr., driving his little Tinker Toy (a converted 18-ft. runabout with which he was making his debut in big-time inboard racing), might follow in the wake of his famed father, four-time Gold Cup winner.

By day’s end, both sentimentalists and experts were disappointed. Not one of the six starters completed the 90 miles. My Sin, Notre Dame and Tinker Toy broke down in the first heat. In the second heat, Notre Dame was unfit to start, Tinker Toy dropped out in the first lap, My Sin in the third. In the last 30 miles, Notre Dame finally got going, roared around at 66 m.p.h.—but it was too late. The cup went to the winner of the first two heats, Sidney Allen’s Hotsy Totsy III.

The Gold Cup regatta has had many bizarre endings in its 37 years, but last week’s topped them all. Hotsy Totsy III, built for the 1937 race, was considered so worthless her owner had bought her for $1,000 only three weeks ago. Champion Allen, owner of a Long Island roller-skating rink, had never entered a race before, was so green he did not know what the checkered flag meant. But by steadily cruising around at 45 m.p.h.—in the last heat he was moving so slowly officials flagged him off the course—Greenhorn Allen, like the tortoise in Aesop’s fable, won the hallowed Gold Cup.