It’s All Downhill Now : Fans Both Young and Old Fuel a Soapbox Resurgence

The crowd began to roar when the Southern California Soap Box Derby Championships reached the final heat.

“Kenny! Kenny!”

“Ryan! Ryan!”

The two pint-sized rivals positioned themselves for the final seconds of a grueling day of racing, facing off in the first competition in Long Beach since 1955.

This year’s race is one of a series across the country heralding a return of derbies after nearly two decades of dwindling interest caused by a cheating scandal in the early 1970s and a dearth of corporate sponsors.

Not much is as it was--not even the kids. It used to be that only boys coasted down the asphalt at speeds up to 40 m.p.h. This year, there were just as many girls, some as young as 9, jostling for position in the final runs. Gone are the days of human judges, replaced by infrared sensors that determine winners to the thousandth of a second--the same sorts of gadgets and computers used at the Long Beach Grand Prix.

But the dads are still there, holding cameras and video recorders, many a little paunchy and graying at the temples, telling story after story from the ‘50s and ‘60s of the time they won, or nearly won, or wanted to win, or barely made it across the finish line.

Kenny Girardi’s dad, Bob, a Long Beach dentist who lives in Huntington Beach and moonlights as a top fuel dragster mechanic, ran one race as a kid. “I had a little ugly car and I did very poorly,” he said. “I went down the hill once and placed third out of three cars. That was my early racing career. And it was a wonderful experience.”

For the Long Beach championship, Bob Girardi arranged to have a tractor trailer--used to haul professional dragsters--at the race site on Obispo Street so the kids could get a look at half a million dollars worth of race-car parts inside. On the side of the rig, written in foot-high letters, was “Kenny Girardi.” Bob’s polo shirt said the same thing.

Eleven-year-old Ryan Papp of Riverside, the son of one of the first successful female soapbox racers from the ‘60s, was Kenny’s competition in the final heat. He was undaunted by his rival’s publicity. Having Kenny’s name on the side of a truck “doesn’t necessarily mean he can win,” Ryan said, adding quickly, “though he’s good. It just means his name’s on the side of a big truck.”

The three-day competition in Long Beach on Friday, Saturday and Sunday was marked by such courteous competitiveness, with winners and losers congratulating and consoling one another as the heats wore on. The stakes were big on Sunday: 78 kids competed in three divisions, with winners going, all expenses paid, to compete in the nationals at Akron, Ohio, in August.

In the sport’s heyday, Southern California soapbox racers numbered more than 5,000, said promoter John Taylor, who organized the Long Beach race. Now, fewer than 300 participate.

Race officials trace the decline to dwindling corporate sponsorship. Chevrolet, for instance, pumped $1 million a year into derby racing until the early ‘70s.

But the skyrocketing cost of liability insurance prompted Chevrolet and other corporate sponsors to stop bankrolling the sport, Taylor said. Recently, though, more and more corporations have been willing to sponsor derby racing, though in smaller percentages than the old days.

“I’ve probably been to 100 local races, and this is the biggest I’ve ever seen,” said Jeff Iula, general manager of the All American Soap Box Derby in Akron. Iula was in Long Beach to help officiate. “This race is first-class.”

On the track, side by side, racers positioned their cars, fiberglass and wood and only marginally aerodynamic. The generic white stock cars come from a kit, cost about $250 and take roughly three hours to assemble.

The other cars, in the kit and master divisions, can cost $300 to $400 and allow embellishments such as an Indy 500 finish, smooth and flawless as a Chinese lacquer table, in fluorescent blues, greens, yellows and blacks, with Technicolor flourishes and professional lettering. Bob Girardi estimates that he and his son spent 200 hours and $400 building Kenny’s kit-car racer.

Danielle Knapp, 15, figures she worked about six months to finish her car. It has a glossy lavender paint job that matches her fingernail polish, racing outfit, ponytail headband, even her colored braces. Danielle painted her name on the side of the car and dotted the “i” with a heart.

“I painted and sanded, painted and sanded, touched it up, painted and sanded some more, waxed it, did the lettering, waxed it some more. That’s my most unfavorite part,” said Danielle, who lives in Long Beach.

John Knapp, her father and a four-time derby competitor, helped her haul the car onto the starting blocks, a couple of wooden platforms tilted into the gentle downhill slope of Obispo Street just north of Hill Street. The race is 950 feet and takes 30 to 40 seconds to complete.

Inside the racer, the fit is so tight that some kids cross their arms across their chests and lie down, giving the car the look of a rolling coffin. Danielle climbed in and her father secured the car’s visor with lavender tape so only the top of her helmet was visible.

“Thirty seconds,” the official shouted. To stay in the race, Danielle, the underdog (the previous night’s rain had rusted her axle) had to beat Ashley Jones, 13, who drove to Long Beach from up near Fresno with her dad.

The snap of a metal bar released the cars, and Danielle and Ashley rattled down the asphalt, the sound of Signal Hill’s whirring oil derricks making music with the baritone wheezing of a small generator used to power the race’s computer equipment.

Officials with cellular phones and walkie-talkies and a cordless microphone kept each other and the crowd apprised of the racers’ progress.

Half a minute later, the race was over. No. 51, Danielle Knapp, had won by a nose.

In the end, Danielle placed fourth in the master-car division, losing to Yadira Duenez, 12, of Garden Grove, who was disqualified from one of the final rounds because her coach, Jimmy Gust, 21, gave the car a shove. Most took losing hard, their heads hung low as they rode motorized carts from the bottom of the hill to the top.

Luck plays a major role in winning, although steering a straight course helps. To make it as fair as possible, each racer is weighed and ballast added to the car to make sure no one has a weight advantage. A computer determines race positions randomly; after each run, wheels and lanes are swapped. Competitors race at least six times, and through a complicated scoring process are eliminated after two losses.

“The best drivers are into yoga,” said Bob Girardi, Kenny’s dad. “They do relaxation exercises” to help them stay low in the car and steer a straight course. Does Kenny? “Naw, he’s lazy. I can’t get him to do it.”

As the day wore on, competition intensified between Kenny and Ryan, their times only 0.3 seconds apart. At the bottom of the hill, with one race left and Girardi the underdog, a couple of Ryan’s pre-teen supporters shouted encouragement as Ryan and Kenny rode up the hill for their final showdown.

“Ryan, you’re gonna kick butt, buddy. Everybody’s here for you. Everybody wants you to win. Everybody’s rooting for you, and if they don’t, I’ll beat them up!”

Kenny smiled nervously.

“Three days of racing and it comes down to this,” the emcee roared over the microphone as the boys, back at the top of the hill, positioned their cars. “And they’re off!

“It’s head-to-head, toe-to-toe, wheel-to-wheel. It’s nose and nose. It’s too close to call; the computer’s gonna have to decide. Can you believe it, folks, it’s come down to this, and the winner, by 0.0072 second, is . . .

“ Kenny Girardi ! By less than three inches !” It was the closest race in the 59-year history of the soapbox derby, officials said.

In a post-win meeting with the media (one reporter), Kenny, wearing a smile so broad his braces glinted in the sun, was asked about his technique (“I stretch 25 minutes a day and try not to become arrogant because then I’ll lose”) and his luck.

He grinned. “I have a good-luck charm,” he said, flashing a $100 bill wadded up in his palm. “When I lost the second-to-last round, my dad gave it to me as an incentive.”

His mother winced. “Oh Kenny!” she said. “Don’t say that !’ ‘

Kenny planned to pay for dinner that night. He also said he would retire after Akron. Why? “Because,” he said, “next year I’ll be too big.”