Lawn Mower Racing: It’s Just Cut Out for Sponsors

Lawn mower racing, a sport developed by and for a suburban lunatic fringe in England, may be catching on in America.

Can corporate sponsorship be far behind?

Don’t look now.

In Chicago, the U.S. Lawn Mower Racing Assn. has been formed as the official sanctioning body for this “little-known yet exciting sport.”

Its inaugural event, with a budget of more than $100,000, will be the Sta-Bil National Lawn Mower Racing Championships, to be held Sept. 5 at a fairgrounds in Grayslake, Ill. (The title sponsor makes an additive that you pour into the fuel tank of your mower before retiring it to the shed for the winter.)

Riding-mower teams bearing their individual sponsors’ logos--two national hardware chains are among those involved--will compete over a 7/16-mile course for glory and promotional value.

Some of those babies in the “factory/experimental” class can do upwards of 35 m.p.h. over a straight stretch of turf. The blades are removed for safety’s sake.

The USLMRA’s ultimate goal is a national tour with prize money, perhaps even TV coverage.

Clearly, the sport has strayed from its roots.

The British Lawn Mower Racing Assn., whose motto is Per Herbam ad Astra (Through Grass to the Stars), was founded precisely because its members, drinking buddies in West Sussex, had grown disenchanted with the commercialization of motor racing.

The British group’s regulations forbid obvious determination to win, and it frowns on sponsorship.

But this is America.

To Jim Brown, Sta-Bil marketing manager, corporate involvement makes sense: “We needed something on a modest budget that cuts above the clutter.”