AN EVEN DIRTIER DERBY

Soap Box Derby Rolls Into an Uphill Challenge:Trying to get the race back on the road, organizers refuse to confront cheating. (Melanie Payne, August 13, 2003, LA Times)

For a few hours one recent Saturday, Wilton "Bill" Blakely, a 13-year-old from North Carolina, was on top of the world. He was a member of an elite group of fewer than 120 people who could call themselves All-American Soap Box Derby world champions.

Bill had taken the triumphant ride back up Derby Downs race track in Akron, Ohio, where minutes before his gravity-powered racing car had coasted to victory. He was wearing the gold jacket that distinguished him as the champ. He posed with his trophy -- nearly as tall as he is -- on the hill where he won the race. But three hours later he was world champion no more. He was stripped of his title and the $2,500 college scholarship that went with it. He was asked to remove his jacket and hand it over to a derby official.
A post-race inspection had found that the teenager had doctored his racer -- he had cheated.

Such cheating, to one degree or another, is as old as the race. Despite the attempts that the All-American's board of trustees has made to portray the race as pure, wholesome fun, there's a dark side that reared its ugly head again in Akron last month. And an event that was finally making a comeback was tainted once again not only by cheating and but also by a failure to acknowledge that it goes on. [...]

In 1972, a man named Bob Lange decided his son would enter -- and win -- the All-American race. The car was designed by a research scientist in California. Lange flew a former world champion from Indiana to his home in Boulder, Colo., to act as a consultant, and he had the car tested in a wind tunnel. Lange's son won the race, but before the car could be examined, Lange spirited it out of Akron, raising ire and suspicion.

The next year Lange went through similar machinations to make sure the title of world champion stayed in the family. Lange even gave his nephew, Jimmy Gronen, an extra edge by installing a battery-operated magnet in the nose so that when the metal starting plate went into the ground he would automatically be propelled forward. Officials examining Gronen's racer found buttons on the steering wheel and headrest. An X-ray showed the wires and the battery. In front of a group of reporters in downtown Akron, the officials cut the car in half and exposed the illegal device.

Geez, makes those shop teacher dads at the Pinewood Derby look like pikers. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 17, 2003 7:52 PM