The men that make the World Finals work
Havasu welcomes PWC race crew

Racers and fans can thank Blake Corning for a competitive World Finals.

Corning, along with John Bonkowski and Carson Bachelder spent the better part of this week, getting Windsor Bay and Crazy Horse Beach ready for the 2008 IJSBA World Finals.

The finals run Tuesday through the following Sunday.

The trio set the buoys and lines for the course, timing them to make sure a lap on a top speed professional personal watercraft would take about one minute and 90 second for a novice racer.

“This race (the World Finals) is the most fun,” Corning said. “We have the best racers and I have the best staff. The very best staff.”

All three men got involved in race direction the same way. Each started as a racer and as the years went on, they looked for ways to stay in the sport. Now the trio is looked on as the experts when it comes to getting the races off without a hitch.

Corning is race director for the World Finals and Bonkowski not only handles the northern California regional circuit, he “drags buoys,” as he calls it, each week for local racers to practice.

“We race only once a month but since I set up the buoys in a private lake for practice, I get to race every day,” Bonkowski said.

Bachelder is race director for a series of races in Thailand and the Kings Cup in Asia, where, he says, PWC racing is “bigger than soccer.”

“But as much fun as that is, this race (the World Finals) is the most prestigious. This is the biggest,” he said.

And the biggest means a great deal of work in preparation for the races. Before the first heat starts, the men will have spent two days rigging and dropped 40 buoys into the water anchored by 320 cinderblocks. They’ll install two “log” jumps made of tires, string 2,500 feet of rope and then tear it all down again just after the final racer crosses the line Oct. 12.

Plus during the races there are the pre-race safety inspections and the post-race technical inspections – under the direction of Bachelder – occurring all day every day.

And Bonkowski rides with safety crew that are on the water to rescue injured racers and make repairs to the course between races.

After more than a decade of setting up the World Finals, Corning said his team has it down to a science.

“The 40 people I hire know their jobs so well, they make me look good,” Corning said. “They know what to do so when racing starts it’s like I get to relax, get a little peace of mind.”

Corning said he’d like to see the races return to the spectacle of the 1990s, when the World Finals was wall-to-wall with racers and fans. To do that, he said there needs to be more industry support and a boost from the city.

But until then, the trio remains committed to making sure each World Finals goes off like clockwork.

“My favorite thing is that first guy, in the first heat, going around the first buoy,” said Bachelder. “That’s when I go ‘aw yeah. It’s game on.’”

You may contact the reporter at dbell@havasunews.com.