DAVE VILLWOCK PRESENTS BUD
OWNER WITH 11TH GOLD CUP

DETROIT - 1 June 1997

By J. Michael Kenyon

DETROIT -- Dave Villwock and the Miss Budweiser survived wind, rain, rough water and a veritable melee of a boat race to finally annex powerboating's most prestigious event, the 90th Chrysler Jeep APBA Gold Cup for unlimited hydroplanes, in a re-run of the winner-take-all-final today on the Detroit River.

Mitch Evans upset the dope by putting the Appian Jeronimo into second place while Mike Hanson finished third in the DeWALT Tools entry.

Thus Villwock won the Gold Cup for a second straight year (he won in the PICO American Dream in '96) and jovial owner Bernie Little, 70, of Lakeland, Fla., receipted for his record 11th Gold Cup in a 35-year career of campaigning the famous Miss Budweiser.

Appian Jeronimo hadn't originally qualified for the final, being short on preliminary heat points. But when Ken Muscatel withdrew his Computers & Applications due to mechanical woes, Mitch Evans got his big yellow and red boat into the final as first alternate. With the other boats experiencing either engine problems or difficulties with the tough water conditions, he fought his way up to a solid second-place finish.

The restart was necessary because the first final try was marred by the first-lap, first-turn wreck of the Close Call, driven by Mark Tate and owned by Steve Woomer, whose team won this race in 1991 and 1994. Tate was okay but the boat, which hooked violently into billowing water near the Belle Isle Bridge, was pretty well battered. Officials halted the race for safety reasons.

The carnage of the week was near staggering proportion. Scott Pierce flipped over The Wellness Plan during Thursday qualifying, destroying that boat, owned by Fred Leland. Then Leland's PICO American Dream and Woomer's Miss D.O.C/TruckGear crashed in the pre-race warmup before Heat 2A on Saturday, the latter going onto the scrap heap. An all-night thrash by about 100 Progressive Tool (PICO) employees put the American Dream back into the race Sunday. But, with relatively minor engine and equipment failures to other boats, the field was down to a handful by the time the final was restarted.

LAS VEGAS-LABATT-CLOSE CALL-FRUIT OF THE LOOM-ZODIAC-ODOULS


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