When Your Other Attempts To Change The Rules Sink, Play The Race Card

So, your boat doesn't meet the classification to race in the Detroit Hydroplane races? Most people determined to race would either plan ahead and buy the appropriate class of boat, or they might just enter in a race that has the class of boats they own for racing.

Not Jerry Bell of Detroit. He decided instead to play the race card: The Detroit Free Press: Detroiter Jerry Bell says Detroit River Regatta Association racist for not running his hydroplane class in Gold Cup

Jerry Bell calls it racism.

Officials from the Detroit River Regatta Association say that’s nonsense.

Bell, a 38-year-old African American power boat racer from Detroit, briefly disrupted the ABPA Gold Cup Unlimited Hydroplane kickoff event at Campus Martius Park on Tuesday when he loudly challenged regatta staff on stage as to why he couldn’t race on the Detroit River this weekend.

It’s not the first time Bell, who has competed in 5.0-liter hydroplanes in the past, has accused the DRRA and American Power Boat Association of preventing him from competing at the Gold Cup event.

So he's a regular user of the Race Card Express.

“The following year, he pulled the same thing. We let him run an exhibition on the river in 2009. What everybody needs to understand is that we run a lot of events … and this year we were going to run Grand National Hydros, and Jerry doesn’t even own a Grand National Hydro. We again couldn’t get enough entries in that class and had to cancel.

“It’s always a racial thing with Jerry. Look, we hire 400 volunteers from all walks of life for the Gold Cup weekend.”

Bell is now trying to pull the big guns of the race card into his farcical claim:

Bell said he contacted civil rights activist the Rev. Al Sharpton and the National Action Network in Detroit about his latest objection.

Meanwhile, Bell hasn't come out to play where races are held with his class of boat:

Said Weber, a former Unlimited Hydroplane driver:

“The rules are perfectly clear by the sanctioning body: He (Bell) has the opportunity to participate when the classes are on the race schedule. He hasn’t cared to do that at two events (Walled Lake and Waterford) recently.”

In other words, instead of entering and competing by the rules, Jerry Bell hopes playing the race card will trump the racing regulations. Pretty pathetic if you ask me, and rather a sad comment that his reality-free racial tantrum gets coverage by the Detroit Free Press.