To call it the Super Bowl of boating is probably an understatement, though the Super Bowl analogy would fit a little better if the entire football season and all its excitement were concentrated into a single week and the Super Bowl itself was stretched into two full days of high power competition between 100 teams. The Lake of the Ozarks Shootout in Missouri truly exists in a league of its own where it serves as the beating heart of high performance boat racing in North America. Where else can you go to see superfast cigarette boats zip by in excess of 200 miles per hour? (For perspective, that’s faster than some airplanes, and tubing starts to get real scary past 30.) A floating crowd of as many as 100,000 people line the courses every year and you can bet many put next year’s races on the calendar before this year’s races are even over.
“It’s the largest event of its kind, anywhere,” says PlayCraft founder Jim Dorris. “It’s amazing how many people the Shootout brings in every year. You’ve got so many boats rafted together.”
At the largest unsanctioned powerboat race in the nation, there are no grandstands. Instead, hundreds of boats line the course as a mighty flotilla of enthusiastic boating fans. If only you could sit in your boat to watch the Super Bowl.
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