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Serious News
05-10-2016, 11:20 PM
Powerboat racer Chris Fairchild describes his sport as a hybrid of three types of racing — airplane, IndyCar and Supercross.

Downtown Nashville will get a firsthand look at the first Formula 1 Powerboat Race in Tennessee from June 18-19, when the “Thunder on the Cumberland” event will bring dozens of high-speed power boats into competition on the Cumberland River.

The 17-foot, tunnel-hull catamarans can go from zero to 100 mph in six seconds, enter hairpin turns at 90 mph and top 120 mph on the straights. They’ll be flying through a three-mile loop on the Cumberland, from the John Siegenthaler Pedestrian Bridge to the Woodland Street Bridge.

“If people have never seen it, well, they’ve never seen anything else like it,” Fairchild said Tuesday, just after giving local media a demonstration of the boats’ speed and power.

“The setup is very much IndyCar and the structure is very much IndyCar. But we fly them like a low-flying airplane and the course changes every lap just like Supercross — because of the way the boats go through a corner, the water, the wind and everything changing.”

Acme Feed & Seed proprietor Tom Morales, the man responsible for bringing the event to town, said he’d been trying to do so for eight years. A Tennessee native who grew up a fan of Fairgrounds Speedway car racing, Morales said he and his partners “plan on creating something Nashville has never seen before.”

The Music City competition will even throw in an added twist — a very narrow course.

Fairchild estimated that most of the Formula 1 Powerboat racing is done on rivers that are about 900 feet wide. But this stretch of the Cumberland is only about 450 feet wide, which should make turns for the dozen or so boats in each race even more challenging.

“This is the tightest course we’ll race,” Fairchild said, smiling before adding, “It’s got the insurance companies a little bit on edge.”

Another of the powerboat racers, Mark Proffitt of Jacksboro, offered more detail on the difficulties of the turns.

“When you have five or six boats all at the same turn together, you almost have to wait for that first boat to turn,” Proffitt said. “You hope he turns on a buoy and then everyone else follows suit. But you have to be careful. You’re not sure whether some guys are going to turn or not turn, skip out or hit you in the side. So you always have to be prepared.”

Needless to say, the combination of high-speed watercraft and tricky courses can produce crashes and injuries.

Fairchild, for instance, said he’s suffered a broken leg and a broken bone in his neck during a racing career of nearly three decades.

Worst of all, he nearly drowned many years ago during a race in Saskatchewan, Canada, when his boat flipped and left him trapped under the water. Fairchild estimates he was underwater for about 90 seconds, finally saved when rescue workers flipped the boat back over — and a diver punched him in the chest to help expel water he’d taken in.

“I think I was good for the first (70 seconds) — it was only the last 20 seconds that got me gurgling water,” Fairchild said. “But the next thing I knew, they’d gotten the boat rightside up and the diver just reached in the cockpit and punched me in the chest. He got me scared enough that it startled me awake, and I was able to watch the water just drain out of my helmet.”

Reach John Glennon at 615-259-8262 and on Twitter @glennonsports.

Thunder on the Cumberland

June 18

11:30 a.m.: Gates open
12:30-5 p.m.: Qualifying heats
5-7 pm.: Riverfront Live Concert — Los Colognes and Corey Mac Band

June 19
11:30 a.m.: Gates open
12:30-5 p.m.: Boat race finals
5 p.m.: Awards

No admission charge either day

http://www.tennessean.com/story/sports/2016/05/10/powerboat-racing-coming-nashville-cumberland-river/84206098/