Boat Racing in South Florida before The Dolfins

[2us70]

In the days before professional sports came to South Florida sports consisted of the" University of Miami Hurricanes" and The Orange Bowl football game and associated festival. That was about it down here. The rest of the time was pretty much a vacuum. Boat racing of all kinds helped fill this local sports vacuum. Most weekends boat races were being run in the area. While the local TV stations didn't give much coverage to the average races the newspapers almost always had stories with complete results. The races of the Orange Bowl Regatta and the Gold Coast Marathon were pretty big sports stories and were well covered by both media. Once pro sports began to be available the local sports media moved on and boat racing dropped off the radar.

[GENE LANHAM]

[2us70]

Spent a lot of time on that dock watching races and waiting for driver changes in races. What year is that picture? Looks to be before 1960.

[GENE LANHAM]

[FMP]

Looks like the best of times

[Mark75H]

Boat racing was a particular interest of William Randolph Hearst, when he passed the baton, the new bosses weren't as interested and it litterally fell off the sports pages of all the Hearst publications. The biggest blow to boat racing ever.

[FUJIMO]

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