1935 APBA Gold Cup
Lake George, Lake George, NY, 1935

Gold Cup Class Revisited : 1935 George Reis Runs Away With The Gold Cup

The average spectator at a Gold Cup speedboat race doesn't know who wins it. Penalties and time adjustments confuse things. Judges clock the cigar-shaped hulls three times over a 30-mile course, add, subtract, and finally announce the champion.

But at Lake George, N. Y., last Saturday, everyone could spot the winner right off the bat. Three boats started; two had engine trouble.

At the finish only El Lagarto, a 12-year-old Packard-motored speedster, survived. Pilot George Reis and Anderson Bowers, his stockbroker and mechanic, smilingly removed life preservers and received congratulations for winning the Gold Cup three years in a row.

Reis has another three-time record in the other annual big test for Gold Cup boats: the President's Cup on the Potomac.

Like Gar Wood, the ace water comet who prefers races where there are no mechanical limitations to speed, Reis has money. His father, a wealthy steel man, forced him to caddy to learn values. He lives in a waterfront house built out over Lake George, and parks his boats underneath in a water-filled garage.

In the winter he retreats to a warmer climate. He takes his wife and 11-year-old son to Pasadena, Calif. There he spends his time in amateur theatricals and in playing musical instruments.

(Reprinted from Newsweek, 1935)

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