Britons Finally Find Something to Cheer About

Britain cheered a maritime victory over the United States on Monday, brightening a dismal summer of sports failure, but there was a sneaking suspicion that the British were bending the rules.

Pop tycoon Richard Branson’s three-day dash across the Atlantic in a powerboat to break a 34-year-old U.S. record for the fastest crossing and claim the Blue Riband trophy was just the tonic to raise British sporting spirits.

Branson raced to the finish line off southwestern England and right across the front pages of Britain’s Monday morning newspapers.

“He’s done it,” “Bravo Branson,” “Whoosh,” “Bang goes a record,” read Britain’s tabloids, delighted to crow over a British victory after a summer of too many sporting failures.

Argentina kicked a struggling England team out of the World Cup soccer competition. American boxer Stevie Cruz knocked the WBA featherweight title off British boxer Barry McGuigan in Las Vegas. Then came Wimbledon and the traditional cheering of Britain’s tennis players to their customary glorious defeat.

That all changed when Branson and his $2.5-million powerboat Virgin Atlantic Challenger II crossed the Atlantic from New York to the Bishop’s rock lighthouse in 3 days 8 hours 40 minutes.

That cut 2 hours 9 minutes off the record set in 1952 by the 53,300-ton SS United States on its maiden voyage.

Amid much backslapping, champagne and publicity, Branson, a tycoon and boss of Virgin Atlantic, the cut-price transatlantic airline, claimed the Blue Riband back for Britain.

But the New York museum that keeps the silver and onyx trophy donated by wealthy politician Harold Hales in 1935 for the fastest Atlantic crossing is not going to hand it over.

Frank Braynard, curator of the American Merchant Maritime Museum, dismissed Branson’s claim. The powerboat was “nothing more than a toy speedboat, which doesn’t weigh more than five tons at the most.”

“It is nothing compared with the great liners, and they are not going to get the trophy. It is for liners,” he told a British reporter.

Branson, an ebullient young entrepreneur with a gifted eye for publicity, was undaunted by the rebuff as he posed for the cameras, tying a six-foot blue ribbon to the masthead of his boat and showing a party of school children around the craft.

“The fact of life is now that ocean liners are not built any more, and it’s going to be smaller boats like this that are going to be the fastest across the Atlantic,” he said.

“I think it’s far more challenging that boats like this should go for it where you’ve got man against the seas than ocean liners with someone eating caviar and sipping champagne while beating the record.