1950 APBA Gold Cup
Slo-mo-shun Wins Gold Cup Regatta
Scores Three-Heat Sweep as Ted Jones Drives to New Records at Detroit
by Clarence E. Lovejoy
DETROIT. July 22 [1950] -- A phenomenal speed boat carrying the incongruous and inappropriate name of Slo-mo-shun [IV] today became the 1950 Gold Cup champion with a perfect point score of 2,000.
Owned by a Seattle auto dealer, Stanley S. Sayres, who was all but unknown and certainly unsung in big league regatta circles until a month ago when he drove her to a new world one-mile straightaway record of 160 mph, Slo-mo-shun was brought east this week.
This afternoon with perfect water conditions on the Detroit River, Slo-mo-shun won three thirty-mile heats of the ninety-mile classic for 1,200 points and then by turning in the fastest heat and fastest race time, both of them now records, added 800 bonus points.
Second in the point scoring was Guy Lombardo's Tempo VI, the 1946 winner, with 825, and third was the sensational champion of last year, Horace E. Dodge's My Sweetie, with 300.
Next Time at Seattle
Now the Gold Cup will leave Detroit for a year and be raced next time at Seattle.
Slo-mo-shun's triumph today left this regatta and automotive city amazed and breathless over her performance. She is built like conventional speed boats with three or perhaps four points of suspension, has the same kind of 1,710-cubic inch Allison aircraft motor under her hatches, and with her shiny mahogany and duraluminum topsides looks like other speed craft.
But she is different, nevertheless, partly because her owner and friends took an unhurried two years, mostly in secrecy, to get her ready and the result is perhaps the best balanced and perfected creation in all the years of the speed boat sport which has seen come and go such famous names as Gar Wood, George Townsend, Clell Perry, Danny Arena, Lombardo and of course, Wild Bill Cantrell.
For instance, because Gold Cup races are run counter-clockwise, which means turns to the left, she has an off-center rudder, some seven inches to starboard or right. Astern she has a vertical aileron, something like those on aeroplanes.
Her designer, Ted Jones, a Boeing aeronautical engineer, drove Slo-mo-shun today and alongside rode as mechanic Mike Welsch. On shore with Sayres was the builder, Anchor Jensen, also of Seattle. It is a team that will take plenty to beat here next week in the Henry Ford Memorial, here again for the Harmsworth in September and perhaps also at Red Bank NJ and on the Potomac.
Eight in First Heat
Eight daredevils came out for the first Gold Cup heat, but it was no race after the first three-mile lap. Jones pushed Slo-mo-shun along, gaining all the while on Cantrell in My Sweetie, first 200 yards ahead, then 800, and finally lapping the defending champion as he had lapped Lombardo in Tempo VI earlier.
Fourth honors went to the outclassed little 225-cubic inch boat, Blitz III, which owner-driver Bob Bogie of Saranac Lake, NY took to Italy last summer. Later today Bogie reverted to her own 225 class and captured the Edenburn Trophy.
Other Gold Cup starters disappeared for various reasons into the pits. Jack Schafer's Such Crust I broke another expensive gear box mechanism, the third in weeks, and his Such Crust II had oil pressure trouble. Danny Murphy in Dee Jay V from the Ocean City (NJ) Yacht Club also withdrew from the first heat, but met with much worse fate when she was one of four starters in the second heat.
Treated for Severe Injuries
On the second lap she capsized in a flip-flop while doing nearly 100 miles an hour throwing into the river Norman Lauterbach of Ventnor NJ, the driver, and James Crudden, a Philadelphia auto merchant, the mechanic.
Both were rushed to a local hospital for x-rays with Crudden's injuries especially severe. Dee Jay V is in twenty feet of Detroit River water tonight but may be salvaged by grappling. Fageol's skill at the wheel was just the tonic My Sweetie needed. In front nine of the ten laps it looked like an assured upset of the now-favored Slo-mo-shun. But on the final circuit My Sweetie's oil pressure failed, some back firing blazed up from the motor and Fageol had to drive off the course, letting Slo-mo-shun acquire the lead and with Lombardo the runner-up.
This second heat went to Slo-mo-shun only after the narrowest of margins. My Sweetie had a change of drivers between the first and second heat. Cantrell could no longer endure the strain of a bouncing, gyrating craft, especially after his injuries Wednesday when he was bruised from head to feet when driving Dodge's Delphine X, which capsized in the trials.
His spell-off was Lou Fageol, veteran amateur of many a regatta but actually a gray-haired manufacturer of auto coaches, buses and motors at Kent, Ohio, who would rather race boats than eat.
A Two-Boat Final
The final and slowest heat saw Slo-mo-shun ahead all the way in a two-boat affair with Tempo VI bringing up the rear.
Records fell like leaves in November. The lap mark for a three-mile Gold Cup course which stood at 77.991 mph, made by Arena in 1946 in Miss Golden Gate, went upward at least a half dozen times but was stabilized finally at 86.2 mph, which Fageol made.
Jones' new heat record, to break Cantrell's 78.645 in My Sweetie last year, soared to 80.151 in his first heat and then to 80.897 in the second. And the new 90-mile race record is Jones' 78.216 mph to erase R. Stanley Dollar's 75.559 made last summer in his ill-fated Skip-a-Long.
| First Heat | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | Slo-mo-shun IV | Ted Jones | 80.151 mph |
| 2. | My Sweetie | Bill Cantrell | 71.78 |
| 3. | Tempo VI | Guy Lombardo | 68.227 |
| 4. | Blitz III | Bob Bogie | 57.27 |
| Four starters did not finish. Such Crust I with Danny Foster driving, Such Crust II, Dan Arena; Dee Jay V, George Miller; Chaz, Charles Klein. | |||
| Second Heat | |||
| 1. | Slo-mo-shun IV | Jones | 80.897 |
| 2. | Tempo VI | Lombardo | 72.056 |
| My Sweetie, with Lou Fageol driving forced out at tenth lap from loss of oil pressure and backfiring. Dee Jay V, with Norm Lauterbach driving capsized. | |||
| Third Heat | |||
| 1. | Slo-mo-shun | Jones | 73.602 |
| 2. | Tempo VI | Lombardo | 71.924 |
| Final Point Score | |||
| Slo-mo-shun IV | — | — | 2,000 |
| Tempo VI | — | — | 825 |
| My Sweetie | — | — | 300 |
| Blitz III | — | — | 169 |
(Reprinted from the New York Times July 23, 1950)