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Rubber did not burn and there were no skid marks, though a race of 10 rubber-tired vehicles did occur on Sept. 24 in the parking lot of Buck’s restaurant in Woodside.
The sun shone, but glare from the gleaming chrome on the vehicles did not play havoc with the eyes of spectators, including a troop of 30 children, about the same number of adults, several elderly women and a few firefighters. The entire race was run in the shade.
At the starting line, smiles were not in abundance amid looks of grim determination on the faces of the racers, none of whom wore helmets. While there were lanes, no one paid them any mind as the vehicles wandered forward, and yet there were no collisions.
Shortly after 3:30 p.m., and after several minutes of warming up the crowd, Tyler MacNiven, son of Buck’s owner Jamis MacNiven, proclaimed, in the manner of starting officials down through time, “Ready, set, go,” and the race was on.
In less than three minutes, it was over. Betty Dong, 84, won the second annual wheelchair race walking away, literally. She used her feet to merrily dog-paddle her way into an early and commanding lead that she never lost over the 75-foot up-and-back course.
“Oh, I’m out of breath,” she said, sitting by herself behind the start-finish line after it was all over. “I’m glad I won,” she added. She said she has had to deal with congestive heart failure and coronary bypass surgery. Her prize, a box a candy, was likely bittersweet in that she is also diabetic.
Ms. Dong is a resident of the Home Sweet Home residential care center in Colma, as were all the competitors who came to Buck’s to raise money for Companions for the Soul, a Redwood City-based nonprofit that provides animals for animal-assisted therapy.
In the race, Julie Nelson, 91 and apparently a purist, took second place. Significantly, Ms. Nelson’s feet never touched the ground. “I pushed,” she said in a post-race interview, the barest hint of belligerence detectable in her remark. “That was fun,” she then added brightly. “It wore me out.”
Several women were unaware of the no-holds-barred aspect of the race. Indeed, Ginger Mozzeti, the executive director of Companions for the Soul, told The Almanac that she had received a complaint about the winning racer using her feet.
The women train for this race, Ms. Mozzeti said, in explaining the generally grim faces on the racers. There will likely be two race categories next year, she added, one allowing the “walking” and the other restricted to hands-on-wheels.
Last year’s winner, Pruna Sbragia, now 100 years old, did not place in the race. “My legs just went out,” she told The Almanac.
The Home Sweet Home residents, led by conductor Ken Clarke, gathered for a hand-bell concert in the parking lot after the race and some reviving lemonade.