Word: racers
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Died. Alfred Thomas Goldie Gardner, 68, youth-defying British auto racer, first light-car driver (in a souped-up MG) to crack 200 m.p.h., holder at his death of four international records; in Eastbourne, England. "To cut wind resistance, I drive on my stomach," said Goldie Gardner. "A poor chap in an American hot rod has to sit upright-frightfully drafty." Flat out, Gardner, at a youthful 61, set 16 records in one day on Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats in 1951, 21 more (in one week) the next year...
Died. Peter Collins, 26, sports-car racer, one of Britain's three top speed drivers (with Stirling Moss and Mike Hawthorn), winner of the British Grand Prix (1958), the French Grand Prix (1956) and the Belgian Grand Prix (1956); when his Ferrari crashed in the German Grand Prix; near Adanau, Germany...
Died. Henry Farman, 84, Englishman who became one of the first flying Frenchmen (99 ft. in 1907), champion cyclist, auto racer, painter, planemaker, first man to fly a heavier-than-air machine over New York City (1908); of a heart ailment; in Paris. In 1908 Farman won the 50,000-franc Deutsch-Archdeacon Prize by flying (in a closed circle) the first kilometer-in-air over Europe, nine months later made the first city-to-city flight, a hop of 17 miles from Chålons-sur-Marne to Reims. One of the first designers to utilize such basic devices...
...four yachts were newly born, built especially for this event. Each was the product of minute designing and craftsmanship. The favorite: white-hulled Columbia, created by Olin Stephens, yachting's most successful designer in the last 20 years. Columbia was skippered by dashing Car and Yacht Racer Briggs Cunningham (TIME Cover, April 26, 1954), equipped with Ratsey sails made of a special new synthetic and financed by a New York Yacht Club syndicate headed by Manhattan Financier Henry Sears...
There was, as a matter of fact, just this much more: Indiana's young (29), clean-jawed Pat O'Connor rode right up the stern of another racer, could not keep his Sumar Special from flipping over. No stranger to the Brickyard, Irish Pat O'Connor had racked up some 2,000 miles there in four other 500s. But experience could not save him. He suffered a fractured skull, died in flaming wreckage. The first lap was not yet finished and the 42nd Indy 500 had scored the race's 48th fatality. Elisian, whose harebrained driving...