Nothing plain about hydroplanes
All right, so the celebratory bottle-smack was a bust.
The 2013 Diamond Cup Regatta hydroplane races won't be.
On Wednesday, a staged media event in downtown Spokane to promote the hydroplane races on Lake Coeur d'Alene this Labor Day weekend drew all of one media outlet: The one you're holding in your hands right now. So when Spokane Mayor David A. Condon whacked Miss Spokane - the hydroplane, not the beauty queen- with a champagne bottle that refused to explode, there were no national TV cameras or live web feeds to make the red-faced moment go viral.
Bad luck that almost nobody showed, and that embarrassed smiles, rather than champagne bottles, were all that were cracked? Hardly. It ended up feeling like the kind of good fortune that big events like these can always use to ramp up momentum.
We confess that we were among those who had serious doubts that hydroplanes would ever return to our beautiful lake. So much sponsorship money is needed to stage an undertaking of this magnitude that it seemed out of reach, particularly so soon after a historically wretched recession. Passion's precious, but it doesn't pay the bills. At least, not unless the passion spreads to thousands of fans who happily fork over premium dollars to witness the sleek, ultramodern vessels screaming across the lake surface at more than 200 mph.
Since it's been almost half a century since these races graced the lake, many of the people around here have no idea what to expect, let alone whether or not they'll check it out themselves. We want to help them make up their minds.
On July 31 The Press will distribute a special section devoted to the 2013 Diamond Cup Regatta, endeavoring to answer as many questions as possible about the event. The special section will be inserted in some 90,000 newspapers from western Montana across North Idaho and well into eastern Washington.
Forty-nine years ago, these races drew more than 100,000 spectators to the Coeur d'Alene area. That high-water mark is perhaps ambitious for a resurrection project like this right now, but we believe the races can grow in the next few years to become not just a huge attraction for North Idaho, but the single biggest spectator event in Idaho, year after year.
Attendance records will be much more likely to break than that sturdy champagne bottle in the hands of Spokane's mayor.
Hear ye, hear ye!
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