Columnist Ron Kantowski: Hydroplanes struggling to stay afloat

Thursday, Sept. 24, 1998 | 10:23 a.m.

HYDROPLANE FANS shouldn't miss the boats out at Lake Mead this weekend. Because indications are the Las Vegas Cup, trying to stay afloat in a sea of limited interest -- both the financial and the literal kind -- is apt to go down for the third time.

The Las Vegas Cup is the third installment of unlimited hydroplane racing at Lake Mead. In its first reincarnation during the late 1980s, the Las Vegas/ Budweiser/Silver Cup runneth over as a successful sporting event, or at least a really cool way to get a suntan.

Best guestimates placed the three-day weekend crowds as high as 200,000 spectators in those days. Many came to watch Miss Budweiser and Miss Miller High Life race deck-to-deck at 200 mph; just as many (if not more) came to guzzle Budweiser and Miller High Life and ogle the sleek chassis -- and we're not talking about the hydroplanes -- on Boulder Beach.

Last year, however, the shoreline was about as populated as the one at Amityville during shark season. Boulder Beach doesn't smell like Hawaiian Tropics any more. In fact, with most of the diehard race fans queing up for NASCAR tickets out at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, hairy guys in tank tops outnumber the swimsuit models by about 10-to-1.

There are a lot of reasons the Las Vegas Cup is destined to wind up in Davy Jones' locker (the LVCVA is "seriously reviewing" its sponsorship commitment, according to insiders), with the opening of LVMS probably being the biggest. With Winston Cup stock cars and Indy cars running circles around Richie Clyne's maginificent 1 1/ 2-mile oval, the hydroplanes' monopoly on professional motor sports here dissolved like an Alka Seltzer in Dean Martin's water tumbler.

The sight lines for boat racing at Lake Mead are horrible, with the distance between the race course and the shoreline precluding fans from feeling the thunder of the mighty turbine engines, or feeling the spray of the majestic rooster tails they produce. Forget the binoculars. You won't see much without a spyglass this weekend.

But these are factors indigenous to Las Vegas. The sport as a whole recently has encountered more rough water than the U.S.S. Minnow on its three-hour cruise.

Only eight boats are entered for Las Vegas, and two of those probably won't race after being damaged beyond repair in crashes at San Diego last weekend. Leadership is sorely lacking, as the circuit has had more commissioners (3) than winners (2) this season. The team with all the money (Miss Bud) wins nearly all the races, only the average fan doesn't know it, because media coverage of the hydroplanes is practically nonexistent.

The tour didn't even publish a media guide this year and unless you're up around 4 a.m. and get ESPN2, chances are you haven't seen the hydros on TV, either.

"As long as the owners are running the show, trying to protect their own interests instead of thinking about the future of the series, the future is doomed," is the way Chip Hanauer, the retired 10-time Gold Cup champion and the closest thing boat racing has to a household name, put it in a published report last weekend.

So if you're heading out to the lake this weekend, bring a life preserver. The sport may need it.