Coppa dell'Oltranza

"To whom he placed and to whom he will place beyond life the signs of his lightning fire"
These are the verses that Gabriele D'Annunzio dedicated to Sir Henry Segrave who died on 13.06.1930 on Lake Windermere in an attempt to set a world speed record on water aboard the "Miss England II" whose steering wheel is preserved in the room of relics at the Vittoriale degli Italiani. Gabriele D'Annunzio has always shown a notable interest in motorboating both nationally and internationally. A great fan of speed, the poet has always loved great victories and new challenges in seeing man strive to overcome limits. It is thanks to him that the Gabriele D'Annunzio motorboat club was founded on the waters of Lake Garda in Gardone Riviera back in September 1929, and in the same year on 28 October it was already active in organizing the first motorboat meeting on Garda: a propaganda event open to small boats of the outboard classes. On November 12, the club obtained affiliation with the Italian Motorboat Federation. In the poet's style, however, there was a desire for a great event with powerful boats in search of absolute speed. Thus, in 1930, the Gabriele D'Annunzio cup was established for pure speed, reserved for racers without limitation for category A. By regulation, the cup must be held exclusively in the waters of Gardone and be definitively awarded to the winning pilot twice, even if not consecutive, even when driving different boats.
For the first edition, the minimum speed required to win the trophy was 65 nautical miles. Subsequently, to be admitted to the winners' classification, the pilots had to exceed by at least one nautical mile the speed recorded by the winner of the previous event. In the same year, on June 13, on Lake Windermere, the English pilot Henry Segrave, during an attempt at a world record for speed on water, died aboard his "Miss England II". Shortly before the tragedy, the unfortunate British pilot recorded a speed of 194.565 km/h, which earned him the homologation of the record of 156.702 km/h as the average of the times on the first two passages. The tragedy shook the soul of Gabriele D'Annunzio who decided to dedicate his cup to the memory of Segrave. In May 1931, in Gardone Riviera, this historic international competition inspired by the continuous attempt to go "beyond and further", called Coppa dell'Oltranza, began. The first edition was characterized by the unfortunate test of the English Key Don who had the completely restructured hull of the poor Segrave.
Over the years, good performances by Becchi, Ruspoli, Theo Rossi di Montelcra, Wanarauker, Cattaneo and Passarin followed, but none of these great drivers succeeded in winning the coveted cup. Only in 1949, after an 18-year wait, was the trophy awarded for the first time to the winner Achille Castoldi who, on board the S.Ambrogio II hull powered by an Alla Romeo DB, reached an average speed of 101.500 km/h. In 1951, the circuit was modified for the first time with a triangular layout of 8 km for a total of 4 laps which decidedly favoured high speeds. Ezio Selva and his 2800 cc Abbate-BPM hull named “Moschettiere" improved Castoldi's performance, achieving an average speed of 125.108 km/h. But this edition is remembered more for the post-race controversy involving the Englishman Donald Campbell than for Selva's victory.
Since the Oltranza regulations state that the cup is not expressly awarded to the competitor who crosses the finish line first, but to the one who achieves the highest average speed on the two best laps, the “yellow” issue broke out at the end of the race. After a careful check of the lap times, the Englishman Campbell (initially declared the winner of the cup) was accused of having achieved his two fastest laps outside the maximum time limit, exactly 5 minutes after the arrival of his fellow countryman Buckley, who came first in the race, but with a slower speed than Campbell. For Ezio Selva, it was an unexpected victory, but deserved nonetheless, but our great driver still writes his name in the Register. d'Oro della coppa also in 1955 when he reached with his racing car the average of Km/h 138.581 on the classic circuit repeated six times.
In 1960 this challenge "moved" from the Brescia side of Gardone to the Verona side of Garda where the victory was recorded by Lino Spagnoli and his racer Celli-Maserati with the average of Km 131.556. This speed, clearly lower if compared to that of Ezio Selva five years earlier, is exclusively attributable to the new regulation of the race which imposes for this edition the reduction of the length of the course from 5000 to 3000 m with straights that go from 2400 to 1400 m. Maintaining the four buoys and the 100 m between the two turning buoys, the race is held over the distance of ten laps instead of skiing while remaining faithful to the total thirty kilometers that have always been planned. Noteworthy was the performance of Flavio Guidoni who triumphed in 1961 with an average speed of 142.971 km with his 6300 cc Timossi-Maserati hull.
These exceptional pilots achieved success by competing in the various editions with the most illustrious names in international inboard racing such as the British Campbell and Buckley, our Mario Verga and the German Von Mayemburg.
The Coppa dell'Oltranza was no longer awarded between 1962 and 1968, after which successive technical and organizational difficulties stopped the competition for 27 years. In 1996, in fact, the former racing driver Remigio Telasio, after having founded MAS (Motonautica Associazione Salò) with his wife Anna, re-proposed this competition in a modern key, with the variations that for the first time it was held in a location other than Gardone and that the race was open to the categories of 2000 cc racers, to the Entrobordo Corsa unlimitati and to the outboard catamarans of F.2 and F.1.
It was Guido Cappellini, with the catamaran of Fl built in his shipyard the DAC of Mariano Comense and powered by a Mercury 2500 cc, who won the cup with a very high average of 166.892 km/h "flying" over the waters of the Gulf of Salò and "shattering" the old limit established way back in 1961 by Flavio Guidotti. Two years later in 1998, not content, he surpassed himself by repeating the victory at an even higher average in Manerba. In the 2001 edition it was decided to start over by resetting the previous records and the race was held in Toscolano Maderno. So the winners were two: for the outboards the eighteen year old Marzia Moreschi of F.2 (average 177.372 km/h) and for the inboards Romanello Balocchi (average 142.694 km/h) Clerici hull BMW 2000 cc engine.

The original Coppa dell'Oltranza, a work by artist Renato Brozzi, is kept at the Vittoriale degli Italiani in Gardone. The one up for grabs at each edition is a faithful reproduction.

(from book RACER by Claudio Agazzi and Antonio Collini)