The Spirit of Qatar in action at the Lake of the Ozarks Shootout. Inset: Sheikh Hassan and Steve Curtis celebrate their Ozarks speed record.
His Excellency Sheikh Hassan bin Jabor al-Thani and British throttleman Steve Curtis obliterated the existing speed record of 224mph with a stunning speed of 244mph in their second run at the 26th Annual Lake of the Ozarks Shootout in central Missouri on Saturday.
The president of the Qatar Marine Sports Federation (QMSF) and Curtis decided to make their first attempt at the speed record as soon as the course opened in hot, humid conditions on Saturday.
They left the gate as the fourth boat with a legal start, only for the safety parachutes to deploy midway through the run. This failed to stop them posting an impressive first speed of 210mph through the flying finish.
Later in the session the pair took to the water again and a clean run was rewarded with the stunning terminal speed of 244mph recorded through the flying finish.
“I was confident that we could do it on our second run,” said a delighted Sheikh Hassan. “It was so nice to get it spot on. We had the boat under control all the time. Steve did an awesome job throttling it to the gate. He was on and off the throttles all through the mile run and I actually believe that the boat is capable of even more mph!
“We considered postponing the second run until Sunday, but I know the team wanted to get the runs out of the way. We were approaching the finish about 230mph and it felt like Steve backed off a little bit because that’s what we wanted to do. Then we started back on and I saw 240 and I’m pretty sure we reached 250 after the gate. That’s one milestone we have achieved with this boat. Now it’s time to go out and relax and look ahead to see what’s next.”
The Spirit of Qatar Team runs under the auspices of the Qatar Marine Sports Federation (QMSF) and Sheikh Hassan entered his turbine-engined, 50 foot Mystic ‘Al Adaa’am 96’ boat in one of the world’s biggest non-sanctioned powerboat events on the planet in the successful bid to overhaul the 224mph top speed recorded by Bill Tomlinson and Ken Kehoe at the helm of ‘My Way’ in 2013.
