1953 President's Cup
Potomac River, Washington, DC, September 20, 1953
Slo-mo-shun V Wins President’s Cup Despite Heat Record by Such Crust III
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Slo-Mo-Shun V Wins President’s Cup Heat |
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Slo-mo-shun V Wins President’s Cup Despite Heat Record by Such Crust III |
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Thompson Should Be Suspended Says Fageol |
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Boat Pilots Heard By A.P.B.A. Board |
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Boat Drivers Censured |
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Slo Mo Shun V Invades the East |
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President's Cup Regatta = Power |
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Statistics |
WASHINGTON, Sept. 20[, 1953]. The way Lou Fageol drives a super-powered speed boat, admittedly a dangerous sport, makes it look so simple and easy. This was especially true today when he was in the cockpit of Slo-mo-shun V, which became the twenty-second winner of the President’s Cup, even if a rival captured the third and final heat.
But they payoff on points in regattas. And Fageol succeeded in piling up 1,500 of them. Slo-Mo’s owner was not even along the Potomac River this gray but rainless day to see the thrills.
According to schedule, Stanley Sayres of Seattle will fly east for the White House ceremony on Tuesday morning when President Eisenhower will present the trophy for which competition was inaugurated back in 1926 when President Coolidge first did the honors.
Jack Schafer’s Such Crust III of Detroit, with Chuck Thompson driving the double-Allison engined craft that has twice the horsepower of the single Slo-Mo, won the third fifteen-mile heat by at least 250 yards over Fageol.
400-Point Bonus for Mark
And even if Thompson pushed his throttle foot to the floor board to set a new heat record of 93.918 miles an hour. which brought him a bonus of 400 points, his total mounted to only 1,194.
Fageol’s performance included triumphs in the first and second heats, a second in the final test and a 400-point bonus for the fastest forty-five-mile time for the entire race. Slo-mo, clocked at 96.708 m.p.h. for the whole distance, broke the record set last year when Thompson was driving another Detroit craft, Miss Pepsi.
Seven came out from the pits at the Naval Air Station for the second President’s Cup heat at mid-afternoon. The river surface was lumpy. The two craft missing from yesterday’s fleet were Guy Lombardo’s Tempo VI from Freeport. L. I., too battered and worn to attempt another test, and George Simon’s Miss United States [Miss U.S. (1)] from Detroit, new but damaged from yesterday’s rough water.
Five starters finished the fifteen miles. The former Notre Dame, re-christened Miss Wayne under the new ownership of Frank J. Saile of Detroit with Doc Terry at the wheel, was in the lead at the flying start, but this honor lasted hardly a quarter-mile. By then Fageol had taken over.
At the end of the first lap, which Slo-Mo did at 94.407 miles an hour for a new three-mile record for the course, her lead was a good 200 yards. By the third lap she had drawn this out to 300 yards.
Fageol leveled off with this advantage and finished by this margin ahead of Such Crust V, in turn fifty yards ahead of her pit-mate, Such Crust III. A surprisingly poor fourth was J. Lee Schoenith’s Gale II and in last place and almost lapped by Slo-mo was Miss Wayne.
Miss Great Lakes Out
Albin Fallon’s Miss Great Lakes, with Danny Foster driving, scooted back to the pits without finishing the first lap. She had a hole in her hull and was taking in water fast after hitting a submerged log. Horace Dodge’s My Sweetie with Walter Kade piloting lasted a lap and a half. On a barreling roll on the backstretch of the course abreast of the National Airport on the Virginia side of the Potomac, Kade was tossed out of his padded cockpit.
As one Coast Guard rescue boat hauled him overside somewhat gingerly while trying to keep clear of the oncoming monsters, another patrol ship took out after Sweetie, which was running away crazily with her throttle partly open and no one on board. Both driver and boat were brought in safely, but Kade was sent to the George Washington University Hospital needing treatment for shock. Kade also reported hitting some driftwood.
One of the spectators was the New York sportsman, L. Gordon Hammersley, who at the wheel of his Cigarette IV was the winner of the first President’s Cup race. His speed was 55.20, slow by present standards but sensational then. Another former cup winner here today was William M. Horne of Hampton. Va., who in 1932 drove Mrs. Ray T. Baker’s Delphine IV to victory.
In a committee’s correction of yesterday’s announced figures, the fastest lap in the first cup heat was Slo-mo’s at 94.242 m.p.h. instead of the one at 101 m.p.h. originally attributed to Miss Great Lakes.
Another Fageol, 22-year-old Raymond, son of Lou, drew some of the spotlight by winning the 7-liter Class event known as the "Junior Gold Cup." His saffron-colored So Long was the best of a field of three.
A full afternoon of inboard heats before and between the President’s Cup gave excitement to some 37,000 pedestrians and autoists spending their last Sunday of the summer in Potomac Park on Hain’s Point and a few thousand more on the decks of the anchored spectator fleet of 400 yachts.
Among those with perfect performances of 800 points for two heats were W. H. Harrison of Norfolk, Va., piloting Jim Boy III in the 48 cubic inch class, and another Virginian, Bill Brown of Hopewell, driving Wanton Duchess in the 136 cubic inch class.
[Reprinted from the New York Times, September 21, 1953]
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