“Newport Antique Auto Hill Climb marks 100th anniversary of its first ... - Tribune-Star” plus 4 more |
- Newport Antique Auto Hill Climb marks 100th anniversary of its first ... - Tribune-Star
- Sports digest: Martin, Johnson have to defend their crews - San Jose Mercury News
- Flood rescuer repeats father's heroic actions - CNN
- Familiar names lead qualifying at NHRA Mid-South Nationals - Everett Herald
- Dixon powers to fastest time in Top Fuel qualifying - CBS Sports
| Newport Antique Auto Hill Climb marks 100th anniversary of its first ... - Tribune-Star Posted: 02 Oct 2009 08:31 PM PDT Published: October 02, 2009 11:30 pm Newport Antique Auto Hill Climb marks 100th anniversary of its first race By Howard GreningerThe Tribune-Star Newport — After inspecting the 240-cubic inch engine, John Felder closed the hood on his black 1940 Pontiac Friday morning as a 1940 Ford Coupe and a 1926 Ford ton truck drove past along Main Street. Two small Australian flag stickers on the front window of the Pontiac showed that he and his friend, John Shorland, 72, had come a long way to practice today and race Sunday in the 100th anniversary of the Newport Antique Auto Hill Climb. "We bought a car out of a hangar in Wichita (Kan.) and drove it up. Bought it off the Internet. We drove over 2,000 miles to get here. We got here [in the U.S.] two weeks ago," Felder, 63, said in a thick Aussie accent. It's their second year for driving in the Hill Climb. Last year, they drove a 1930s-era Oakland with a V-8 engine. The two sold that car at the Hill Climb and hope to do the same with 29-horsepower Pontiac. "We have to pay for our fare back home or we're stuck here," Felder laughed. "If we can't sell it here, we'll take it to Hershey, Pa., and sell it there." He hopes to get $12,000 for the car. The two haven't decided who will race on Sunday. "He's the riding mechanic," Felder said of Shorland. "The quickest run [today] gets to drive on Sunday. If he drives quickest, he drives. That's fair." Felder said the Pontiac has responded well, with minor setbacks. "We had a rear brake cylinder fail and the generator bearing failed, and we put a fan belt on and that was it," he said. "We've been playing with old cars in Australia for a long time. I like traveling in America. The greatest thing you can do in America is travel in an old car, because when you brake down, you meet the best people. We have met some fantastic people," Felder said. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the first race up Newport's 1,800-foot-long, 140-foot high Newport Hill. Cars are divided into 31 classes for the race, and the competition allows cars built up to 1942 and discontinued models built up to 1955 such as Studebaker, DeSoto, Packard, Kaiser Frazier or Henry J, said Jim Haverkamp, competition director of the race for the past 42 years. Haverkamp lives in Terre Haute. Last year, the race had 309 vehicle entries. The race also now has a class for antique motorcycles. The hill climb also attracts more than 350 flea market and swap meet booths. Parking for the event is largely provided in a 55-acre field adjacent to the main road into the town, off Indiana 63, about 25 miles north of Clinton in Vermillion County. Practice runs today are 8 a.m. to noon and 1 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. A collector car auction will be conducted at noon. A parade will start at 5 p.m., with a cruise-in and street dance at 7 p.m. and fireworks at dusk. Sunday is race day. Show cars can be seen from 8 to 10 a.m., along with practice runs. The opening ceremony for the race starts at 10:45 a.m., with the race starting at 11 a.m. "It's a great time. I've never placed, but I'm just glad to make it up the hill," said third-year racer Rex Meadal of Frankfort, who had just brought in his yellow 1926 Model T to register for the race. "It's more about the fun and seeing all the old cars." Bruce and Kay Atkinson of Monrovia are longtime racers. Its the 41st year Bruce Atkinson, 69, has raced in the Hill Climb; he will serve as grand marshal for this year's race parade. He built his 1920 Model T Ford from parts he had collected for four decades. "I decided to build a speedster and just went out to my pile and started getting parts. It's 176-cubic inch, 20 horsepower, inline flat four [cylinder]," he said of the engine. He also races a green 1926 Ford ton truck. "I'm only one of four or five in that class, so I usually win a trophy every year," he said. Kay Atkinson was quite to point out that the couple has been married 50 years, "half of the time since the first race in 1909," she said. Ed C. Conrad, 72, of Clinton has been racing for 35 years, but will miss the 100th anniversary this year. "I got termites in the [passenger] frame," Conrad said of his brown 1935 Chevrolet 30-horsepower pick-up truck. "I had to let it sit out in the rain and snow," Conrad said. "It's a wood frame with a metal overlay [for the passenger compartment] and that's why I'm not driving it, because of the termites." "It's disappointing, but I'm done now. Now I am doing a flea market booth, so I went down a notch this year," he joked. The Newport Hill Climb, now Newport Antique Auto Hill Climb, was first conducted on June 8 and 9, 1909, and was staged until 1915. It was brought back in 1963 and 1964. The Lions Club of Newport has sponsored the Hill Climb since its return in 1968. Dean Kennedy, a Lions Club member and head of staging for the Hill Climb, said a long "landscape" photograph taken of the first race in 1909 will be duplicated early this morning. Thirteen cars, such as a 1953 Henry J., 1922 Essex and a 1947 Desoto, will be parked in identical positions as the cars were in the 1909 photograph, surrounded by current racers and Newport residents. "Circuit cameras," the type used in 1909, will be used to take the photograph, along with two modern cameras. The record for racing up the hill since 1968 is 22.6 seconds, held by Hank Schluter of Lowell, driving a 1941 Ford pick-up truck, Haverkamp said. Howard Greninger can be contacted at (812) 231-4204 or howard.greninger@tribstar.com.  
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| Sports digest: Martin, Johnson have to defend their crews - San Jose Mercury News Posted: 02 Oct 2009 09:50 PM PDT The San Jose State men got their second shutout and earned their first road victory of the season, a 2-0 win at Houston Baptist University. Miscellany Citing "grave safety concerns" for its U.S.-based crew that would be sailing a massive trimaran named USA within miles of Iran, challenger BMW Oracle Racing on Friday asked a New York court to reject Ras al-Khaimah, United Arab Emirates, as the port for the 33rd America's Cup. BMW Oracle Racing is asking that the port be replaced with Valencia, Spain, as the site for the best-of-3 showdown against bitter rival and two-time defending champion Alinghi of Switzerland. BMW Oracle Racing is owned by software tycoon and sailor Larry Ellison of Oracle Corp. Ellison raised safety concerns after Alinghi announced the venue in early August. BMW Oracle Racing sent a team to inspect the proposed venue and said in a statement issued late Thursday that it "fails on every key measure necessary for a successful America's Cup," including infrastructure, security and wind.  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Flood rescuer repeats father's heroic actions - CNN Posted: 02 Oct 2009 09:14 PM PDT LITHIA SPRINGS, Georgia (CNN) -- As Zack Stephney stepped into the floodwaters last week, history washed over him.  Thirty years after his father drowned in a rescue attempt, Zack Stephney helped save a woman whose car sank. The youngest of five children, he was only 8 when his father died. For three decades, he'd carried with him mere snapshots of memories: Family time at Christmas. Riding on the back of Dad's motorcycle. Tommie Stephney's love for drag-racing. But as the 37-year-old Douglasville, Georgia, man set out September 22 to try and save a woman whose car was swept away by rushing waters, he thought of his father's drowning. He, too, had fought to rescue people struggling against currents. That was in 1979. Tommie Stephney, a City of Atlanta employee, dove into the Chattahoochee River in Atlanta, Georgia, to save canoeists who'd flipped their boat, his son said. He safely brought two to shore. The third, he said, panicked -- forcing them both under. It would be a week before his father's body was found. Dying in the massive floodwaters couldn't be Zack's fate. Certainly not this day. It was his mother Eva's 72nd birthday. Lord knows she didn't deserve news like that. 'All in a blink of an eye' Melissa Brooks was heading east en route to Dunwoody, Georgia, for an important morning meeting with her boss. She doesn't know why, but it simply didn't register with the Douglasville woman that she was the only one traveling along that stretch of I-20. No signs or barriers told her she shouldn't be there. The water up ahead? It simply looked like a puddle, albeit a big one, the kind that would send a huge spray flying. "I got halfway through it, and it took control of my car. It started taking me backwards -- all in a blink of an eye," she said Tuesday. "I knew I was in serious trouble." The Atlanta-area terminal for Werner Enterprises, a large trucking company off I-20 on Blairs Bridge Road, was abuzz that morning. Floodwater from nearby Sweetwater Creek had taken over a large swathe of the property, worse than they had ever seen. Nearly 30 mechanics had scrambled down to the lower lot to move about 100 semis, the water topping their tires. Some guys, including Stephney, a shop foreman who's been with Werner for nearly 19 years, looked out in wonder at the green space next to the lot, which had turned into a wide moving river. When they first saw the silver Mazda coming through the trees from the interstate, they laughed, thinking it had been carried out of someone's driveway. But after it hit a submerged fence and spun around, they spotted Brooks, 40, frantically waving. "My eyes zoomed in to see her fear," said Stephney. And as the car started to go under, he thought, "This woman is going to drown in front of us." Taking charge Brooks thought back to the movies she'd seen, kept the car running and hit the power button to lower the window before it was too late. She was a good swimmer, she knew that much, and with this knowledge -- and purse in hand, of course, she would recall with a laugh -- Brooks pushed herself into the torrent. The current, however, was stronger than she was. It pulled her where it wanted. She grabbed on to what appeared to be a small tree. "Hold on! Hold on!" Brooks heard their voices and held herself together. She wasn't crying, but she was scared for her life. The tree branches began breaking. Stephney had taken off running, back up to the parts room to grab a spool of 1,000-foot yellow nylon rope, the sort used to tie tarps over flatbeds. He threw on a fluorescent safety vest, so the men on shore could easily spot him in the filthy water. Bigger men, including 265-pound Chris Mayfield, were ready to jump into the water. But Stephney, 100 pounds lighter, was laying out a plan in his head. Pulling him out would be easier, he told the men. Why make the job harder with a heavier man? "He took charge like he'd done this a hundred times," Mayfield, 24, said. Maybe it was his training in the U.S. Army Reserves after high school or his father's experience, but keeping everyone calm, warding off panic, was top of Stephney's mind. More than 25 men stationed themselves on two points around the water as he waded in, and fed out the rope tied around him. He worked his way along the 6-foot-high, nearly submerged fence topped with barbed wire, struggling against the current to get close to Brooks, whose car had jumped the fence. The depth of the water worried him. Weeds tugged at his feet and legs. "'What's your name?'" Brooks remembered him asking calmly, his eyes locked on hers. Then, he said, "'Melissa, everything's going to be OK.' And I believed him." She called Stephney the "leader of the pack," and remembered him shouting to the others, "Guys, let's pull this together. If we don't pull this together, we're going to lose her." On the other side of the fence was a stranger, Doug Weghorn. That morning, he'd been checking out the damage to his neighborhood when he came upon the mess abutting Werner Enterprises. Weghorn, 45, was now in the water as well. With a rope in his hand, unknowingly fed to him by Stephney's team, he snatched Brooks from the tree. It wasn't until Stephney was out of the water that he knew, for certain, that he and Brooks had made it. The 'what ifs' The first call was to his wife, Leaquarius, the mother of his three children. She didn't believe him when he told her what had happened. "I kid you not," he told her. "You want to smell me?" He took a shower at work, scrubbed every inch of himself with a whole bottle of Clorox and joked that he was surprised his hair didn't turn white. He showered again, stepped into spare clothes and put in a full day on the job. It would be at least a few hours before he could call his mother. He knew she might get upset. A week later, the death toll in Georgia from the floods was 10. Standing along the fence still tangled with weeds and debris, Stephney peered down at Brooks' mucked-up car, knowing that number could have been higher. "It could've happened to me the same way it did my dad," he said. The "what ifs" keep spinning through his head: What if her window hadn't been down? What if they 'd never spotted her? What if she'd failed to stay calm? Mixed in are thoughts about his father, a man he in many ways struggles to remember. What Stephney did was not unlike the countless heroic efforts that played out in disaster areas during the flood. First responders and regular citizens risked their own lives to save others. But he had something else pushing him, the kind of inspiration rooted in family legacy. And without a doubt, Tommie Stephney would have been proud of his boy.  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Familiar names lead qualifying at NHRA Mid-South Nationals - Everett Herald Posted: 02 Oct 2009 07:27 PM PDT MILLINGTON, Tenn. – Robert Hight raced to the Funny Car qualifying lead Friday at the O'Reilly NHRA Mid-South Nationals. Larry Dixon, Mike Edwards and Andrew Hines also led their categories at the NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing Series event. Hight, who barely made it into the NHRA Full Throttle Series Countdown to 1, has again made the most of his opportunity and followed up his back to back wins in Dallas and Charlotte, N.C. by leading qualifying at the Memphis Motorsports Park at the third event in the six-race championship playoffs. Hight powered his Auto Club Ford Mustang to a No. 1 effort of 4.074 seconds at 310.70 mph. If the performance holds through Saturday's two qualifying sessions (11:15 a.m. and 2:30 p.m.) it will be his fourth No.1 position of the season. Hight earned three bonus points in qualifying under NHRA's new qualifying bonus system, which awards the top three qualifiers in each pro category 3, 2 and 1 points per session. "This Ford Mustang is so fun to drive right now. I love being in the position of being chased. It wasn't very long ago when I would get up in the morning thinking, 'Can we get into the top 10?' It's definitely a different mindset." Jack Beckman, was second in his Valvoline/Mail Terminal Services Dodge Charger, Hight's teammate Ashley Force Hood was third overall in her Castrol GTX Ford Mustang. In Top Fuel, Dixon paced the field with a 3.810 at 318.99 in his Al-Anabi Racing dragster to hold down the top spot. He was quickest in both sessions and earned the maximum six-point bonus available in his category. "We decided to change out of scuffed tires during the last oil down, so we went back to the pit and put on stickier tires," said Dixon, who ran the third-fastest speed of the 1,000-foot era. "We got pretty rushed, and I even got to help change tires. I was suiting up as soon as we got back to the staging lanes. I don't know if the tires made the difference, but it was a great run!" Antron Brown was second in his Toyota/ Matco Tools dragster, while current points leader Tony Schumacher was third in his U.S. Army dragster. Edwards again continued his impressive playoff performance and raced to the lead in Pro Stock with a 6.552 at 210.18 in his A.R.T.-Young Life Pontiac GXP. Edwards was quickest in both sessions, which netted him six bonus points. "We always try to make the best run we can make, and those bonus points are valuable," said Edwards. "They can add up to a whole round of racing if you score all 12 bonus points and get the No. 1 qualifier points." Hines was quickest in Pro Stock Motorcycle, with a performance of 6.899 at 195.85 mph on his Screamin' Eagle Vance & Hines Harley-Davidson. He also earned a total of four bonus points for being third quickest in the first session and the quickest in the second session. "I've struggled on the starting line lately, but I think it helps to have confidence from being in the No. 1 spot, said Hines." NHRA Mid-South Nationals results MILLINGTON, Tenn. -- Results Friday after the first two of four rounds of qualifying for the 22nd annual O'Reilly Mid-South Nationals presented by Pennzoil at Memphis Motorsports Park, 21st of 24 events in the NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing Series. Qualifying will continue Saturday for Sunday's final eliminations. Top Fuel -- 1. Larry Dixon, 3.810 seconds, 318.99 mph; 2. Antron Brown, 3.836, 318.99; 3. Not Qualified: 13. Clay Millican, 3.957, 311.85; 14. Tim Cullinan, 3.991, 289.38; 15. Terry Haddock, 4.005, 294.88; 16. Morgan Lucas, 5.550, 119.32; 17. Chris Karamesines, 5.939, 118.53. Funny Car -- 1. Robert Hight, Ford Mustang, 4.074, 310.70; 2. Jack Beckman, Dodge Charger, 4.101, 306.46; 3. Ashley Force Hood, Mustang, 4.103, 308.00; 4. Tony Pedregon, Chevy Impala, 4.105, 304.60; 5. Cruz Pedregon, Toyota Solara, 4.109, 303.30; 6. Bob Tasca III, Mustang, 4.115, 302.62; 7. John Force, Mustang, 4.116, 295.92; 8. Daniel Wilkerson, Mustang, 4.118, 302.01; 9. Ron Capps, Charger, 4.121, 306.19; 10. Jim Head, Solara, 4.123, 301.00; 11. Tim Wilkerson, Mustang, 4.130, 300.40; 12. Matt Hagan, Charger, 4.136, 304.05. Not Qualified: 13. Mike Neff, 4.136, 302.55; 14. Jerry Toliver, 4.184, 295.21; 15. Del Worsham, 4.225, 296.05; 16. Jeff Arend, 4.282, 280.60. Pro Stock -- 1. Mike Edwards, Pontiac GXP, 6.552, 210.77; 2. Ron Krisher, Chevy Cobalt, Not Qualified: 13. Rodger Brogdon, 6.644, 208.30; 14. V. Gaines, 6.645, 207.62; 15. Steve Schmidt, 6.702, 206.04; 16. Mark Hogan, 6.776, 205.57; 17. Dave River, 7.113, 173.81. Pro Stock Motorcycle -- 1. Andrew Hines, Harley-Davidson, 6.899, 195.85; 2. Michael Not Qualified: 13. Karen Stoffer, 7.082, 189.79; 14. Bailey Whitaker, 7.092, 185.54; 15. Joe DeSantis, 7.118, 188.25; 16. Redell Harris, 7.133, 183.77.  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Dixon powers to fastest time in Top Fuel qualifying - CBS Sports Posted: 02 Oct 2009 07:05 PM PDT MILLINGTON, Tenn. -- Larry Dixon powered his Top Fuel dragster to a 3.810-second run at 318.99 mph Friday and earned six bonus points for leading the two qualifying sessions in the O'Reilly NHRA Mid-South Nationals. In Funny Car, Robert Hight held the lead with a 4.074-second pass at 310.70 and also earned six bonus points for leading the second qualifying session. Mike Edwards raced to the lead in Pro Stock with a 6.552 at 210.18 mph. Edwards was quickest in both sessions, which also netted him six bonus points. Andrew Hines was quickest in Pro Stock Motorcycle, with a performance of 6.899 at 195.85 mph. He earned four bonus points for being third-quickest in the first session and the fastest in the second session.  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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