Strong jetboat team

Press, 9 March 1978, Page 30

Strong jetboat team

By

LES BLOXHAM

New Zealand will field its biggest and strongest ever jetboat team in international competition on the Smoky and Saskatchewan rivers in Alberta, Canada, in July. Six boats have already been entered, and three others are considered likely candidates. The race, which will be the first officially recognised world championship event, will cover more than 900 km of tough river racing over a period of nine days. Prize money exceeding $lOO,OOO will be at stake. Top contender for the championship is John Heslop, of Leeston, who won the Smoky River race last year and the Citizen Watch seven-day marathon in New Zealand in September. He will again be driving the same boat, Union Travel Jet, which currently holds the New Zealand jetboat speed record of 134.7km/h (83 m.p.h.). Heslop’s crew in Canada

| will be Graham Nairn, John, I Westland, Murray Busbridge, > [and Brian Scott, all of | Christchurch. Another strong contender is Alan Johnson, of Featherston, who won the 1974 Rio Balsas marathon in Mexico in Miss Kiwi. Another North Islander, Gordon Ford, of Taumarunui, will drive one of his company’s aluminium boats. He was second in the Smoky River event last year but his boat, J. B. Pukeko, was lost in a fatal accident on the Saskatchewan River barely a day after Ford had sold it. New Zealand’s fourth representative will be a Feilding farmer, Don Johnstone. The marathon will be his first overseas experience. Reg Benton, of Taranaki, who drove in his first marathon only last year, will drive an aluminium boat. All five boats will be powered by Chevrolet turbocharged 454 engines and

Hamilton three-stage racing units.

! The sixth boat, entered byi I Ralph Brown, of Queenstown, and Tom Dunlop, of Christchurch, is being built in the United States, but details are not yet available. Brown knows the Smoky River well, having raced on it twice — in 1976 and 1977. He was second in B class last year. The three strong possibilities for the Canadian international this, year are John Butterfield, of Christchurch (who crewed for Neville Sutherland in Mexico in 1973 when New Zealand first won the Rio Balsas marathon); Peter Phillips, of Christchurch, a familiar competitor in New Zealand marathons who has also raced twice in Mexico: and Gavin McKay, of Christchurch. New Zealand is expecting to face stiff competition from at least 10 other countries in Canada in July.