Water motorsports at the 1908 Summer Olympics

Water motorsports at the Games of the IV Olympiad
Venues	Southampton Water
Dates	August 28–29
Competitors	17 from 2 nations

Water motorsports at the 1908 Summer Olympics
Class A (open)		mixed
Class B (<60 ft)		mixed
Class C (6.5–8 m)		mixed

At the 1908 Summer Olympics, three motorboat racing events were contested. Various sources refer to the sport as "water motorsports", "motor boats", and "power boating". These Games were the only one to feature motorized sports, though it was featured as a demonstration sport in 1900.

All three events used the same distance, five laps around an 8 nautical mile course for a total of 40 nautical miles (70 km). In each of the events, multiple boats started but only one finished, due primarily to the gale that was blowing during the course of the competition. Events were held on 28 August and 29 August 1908.

The water motorsports event was quickly abolished because after these games the IOC decided that the Olympics was not intended for motorized competition.

17 boaters from 2 nations competed.

The open class was scheduled to take place on the first day of competition, 28 August. Two boats, Wolseley-Siddely and Dylan, began the race. Dylan abandoned the race partway through the first lap, with Wolseley-Siddely finishing the first before the weather became too severe to continue the race.

A second attempt to run the event took place the next day, after the other two races had been completed. Wolseley-Siddely again started, this time against Camille (the only French boat to take part in competition). Wolseley-Siddely ran aground on a mud spit, leaving Camille to finish alone for the gold medal.

The B class was held on 28 August, after the abortive first running of the open class. Again only two boats appeared at the starting line, Quicksilver and Gyrinus. Quicksilver became threatened by water coming in over the sides, abandoning the race. Gyrinus, a small boat with an extra crewman to bail water, was able to finish to make its crew the first Olympic champions in motorsports. Gyrinus was the earliest round-bilge Semi-Planing Mono-Hull ('SPMH') designed by Sir John Isaac Thornycroft FRS, the great Victorian engineer, previously the designer and builder of the world's first torpedo boats and torpedo boat 'Destroyers'. Development of the technical features of Gyrinus (combining speed with good seaworthiness, as demonstrated in the 1908 Olympics) was described in 'Engineering', the Proceedings of the Society of Civil Engineers, on March 12, 1909. His son, Isaac Thomas Thornycroft, the Gyrinus helmsman, became a yacht designer and helmsman of J Class racing yachts. Thomas's son, Commander Peter Thornycroft (1914–1987), carried on the family tradition, developing the SPMH as the standard Nelson Class of Pilot Boat for Trinity House (1964 to 1987) and, later, up to much larger sizes of offshore patrol vessels. The US Navy's 350 ft./114-metre/3,200-ton/45-knot USS Freedom is the largest SPMH launched to date (2006). It combines a higher speed-for-length than would be possible with a conventional destroyer hull, good seakeeping at speed and a high payload: characteristics that enabled the little Gyrinus to win her famous Olympic victories.