Racing the Twentieth Century Limited [1925]

Challenge To Hoyt By Wood
Latter Offers to Bet $25,000 on Race
Wants Teaser to Join Rush Down the Hudson Monday
Railroad Declines to be Party to Race

Teaser Beats Train Three Speed Boats to Race Crack Train Wood Out For Two Records Broken Spring Disables Baby Gar V, Leading Challenge To Hoyt By Wood Thousands Along River Eagerly Watched Race Gar Wood Beats Time Of 20th Century Train Power Boats Beat Time of the Twentieth Century

New York, May 21 (A. P.) — Gar Wood, Detroit’s speed boat champion, today offered a bet of $25.000 "or any other sporty amount," as an inducement to Richard F. Hoyt, owner of the speedboat Teaser, to enter his little craft in a race against the famous Wood boats on the Hudson next Monday.

Hoyt is the man who stole a march on Wood yesterday. He started his Teaser on the Hudson at Manhattan and roared his way up the river to Albany in 3 hours and 40 minutes, beating the Twentieth Century Limited running time by 37 minutes. Wood announced that his boats Baby Gar IV and Baby Gar V, with another of his speedsters, the Cigarette Jr. would do that very stunt next Monday. After announcing his $25,000 bet offer —a wager that his boats could beat anything equipped with Wright engines, with which the Teaser is equipped—Wood said he was laying plans to attempt a 48-hour trans-Atlantic crossing from Newfoundland to Cowes, Eng, in 1927. To do it, he added, his boat would have to maintain a 60-mile-an-hour trip, refueling from a steamship stationed at sea.

Officials of the New York Central Lines, operators of the Twentieth Century Limited, today decline to become a part of any race.

Arrangements were completed today for the broadcasting of the event by radio from a great-winged airplane which will fly above the train, whose course parallels the Hudson all the way from Albany, the men on the boats transmitting a detailed account of the unusual affair for rebroadcasting by stations WGY, Schenectady, and WJZ New York.

(Reprinted from P.M., May 22, 1925)

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