Two men from Seattle had the same ambition. They wanted the fastest boat in the world. One of them loved to play with design ideas that would make boats go faster. He had the idea. The other was a successful auto dealer who loved speed and was a boat racer. He had the money. Then came a third—a man who had the mechanical genius to build things that worked. He applied the money and used the idea to build a race boat that not only set the world’s straightaway speed record but also went to Detroit, easily won the Gold Cup—the biggest boat race in the world—and brought the prestigious event to Seattle. SLO-MO-SHUN is the story of those three men: Ted Jones, Stan Sayres, and Anchor Jensen—men who stunned the world of unlimited hydroplane racing in 1950 and brought the world’s fastest boats to the Pacific Northwest. Because of them, the sport became the biggest thing in town. How big? Imagine a local sports event that’s carried live on all three local TV channels at the same time. The hydroplane races were. What’s more, during the week before the annual race, if a local boat went onto the course to make a qualifying attempt, the TV stations would interrupt their regular programming to carry it live. Imagine an event that stirred complaints from local church leaders when officials considered moving it from Saturday to Sunday. They expressed that concern about the hydro races. And, their grievance wasn’t that the event might interfere with church services. It was because their devout worshippers could not attend. And why move the races from Saturday? Because business owners were upset nobody was in their stores shopping while the races were underway. That’s how popular the hydro race was in Seattle during the 1950s. The annual summer event created by the success of Sayres, Jones, and Jensen captivated the area’s young people, drew hundreds of thousands of fans to the shore of Lake Washington each August, and sparked an intense rivalry between Seattle and the Motor City, which once stood at the sport’s pinnacle. But the Slo-mo-shun story goes deeper than boat racing. There was a price to pay for the success. The designer and builder didn’t get along with each other, the owner found himself burdened by the expectations of his hometown, and their rivals schemed relentlessly to take the Gold Cup back to the Detroit River. And so, Slo-mo-shun is not only a story of Seattle’s passion for hydro racing in the early 1950s, but also of teamwork and success over great odds, conflict and bruised feelings, innovation to stay ahead, the strain of celebrity, and, in the end, tragedy.