The Mighty Hamptons Triathlon will celebrate its 30th anniversary when 1,000-plus competitors in the swim-bike-run event plunge into Noyac Bay at Sag Harbor’s Long Beach at 6:40 a.m. Sunday.

    John Howard, the 1981 Ironman champion and a renowned ultra cycler who holds the 24-hour drafting record of 539 miles and cycling’s world absolute speed record of 152.2 miles per hour, as well as the American Canoe Association’s world 24-hour record, is expected to be there as a member of a relay team.

    Howard was among a group of 10 or so world-class triathletes, including Dave Scott, Scott Tinley, Dave Horning, Julie Moss, Allison Roe, Jody Durst, and Mark MacIntyre who helped Ray Charron and Ambrose Salmini inaugurate this race — one of the country’s oldest triathlons — in 1982.

    Durst, the Sri Chimnoy champion, said at the time that it was “the greatest meeting of triathletes barring Hawaii.”

    Charron first proposed the idea of holding a triathlon here in a piece he wrote in The Star on Aug. 13, 1981 after he, Salmini, and Michael Kasser — the Eternal Youth Sport and Social Club — had competed at Sri Chimnoy in Rhode Island, a 76.5-mile test.

    Initially, Mighty Hamptons’ distances comprised a 1.5- mile point-to-point bay swim, a 25-mile bicycle leg, and a 10-mile run. They were pared down later to a 1.5-kilometer (.93-mile) swim, a 23.8-mile bike, and a 10K run. Scott’s winning time of two hours and 26.09 minutes was described as “incredible” by Charron, who had predicted the winner would do between 2:30 and 2:35. Scott, who had been the 1980 Ironman champion, went on to win that title five more times.

    Also expected to compete Sunday will be Jim Bolster, the Columbia University men’s swim team coach, who won here in 1985 and ’86, and Margot Lulla-Aisiks, a six-time winner in the 1990s.

    Getting back to Mighty Hamptons’ debut, Tinley and Moss, who had captured the nation’s attention as she collapsed and crawled to Ironman’s finish line in February of 1982, missing first place by seconds, arrived late and both made wrong turns — Moss in the bike, and Tinley in the run.

    Tinley nevertheless placed fourth, behind Scott, Durst, and MacIntyre. Horning, a 190-pounder who had just won the Escape From Alcatraz race, was fifth.

    Lyn Brooks, who had placed third in the 1981 and ’82 Ironmans, was the women’s winner, finishing 15th over all, one second behind Howard. Roe, the women’s world record holder in the marathon then, who was making her triathletic debut, was the women’s runner-up.

    With Manufacturers Hanover Trust as the major sponsor, it was a heady beginning, though not long afterward Charron decided to simplify, and so Mighty Hamptons, whose first field numbered 220, decided to  make it “a people’s race.”

    And it grew and continued to be popular thereafter,  bearing out Howard’s prediction, made at the pre-race pasta dinner, that “participatory sports are the future.”

    Tim Ensign, a 48-year-old visitor from Chattanooga, Tenn., and Justin Kulchinsky, 38, the owner of Mayfair Rocks, a jewelry store in East Hampton Village, were the winners of the Great Bonac 10 and 5K races in Springs Monday.

    Ensign, who first won this race in 1997, and who recalls only having been beaten once, by Geary Gubbins, when he was a high school student, didn’t have much competition this time inasmuch as the 25-year-old Angel Rojas, a Hampton Bays resident who presumably has been too busy to train much in the past few months, was making his first appearance on the running scene here this summer.

    Ensign’s winning time was 35 minutes and 58 seconds; Rojas, the runner-up, crossed the Springs Fire Department’s finish line in 38:31, and Jason Hancock, 37, who was to have switched from having taught sixth graders to teaching kindergarteners at the Amagansett School yesterday, was third in 39:04. Tyler Tikkanen, an 18-year-old East Hamptoner, was fourth, in 42:07.

    Sharon McCobb, 48, who trains young triathletes here, was the women’s winner, in 44:26, trailed by Heather Caputo, 34, in 47:59, Stephanie Brabant, 35, in 49:25, and Patricia Foster, 43, in 50:23.

    Kevin Barry and Diane O’Donnell, East Hampton High School’s cross-country coaches, had most of their charges — those who weren’t working — run the 5K as a practice session.

    Kulchinsky, 38, was the 5K winner, in a pretty swift time of 17:51, followed across the line seven seconds later by the Roaring Thunder Track Club’s Trent Hampton, 32. Amar Kuchinad, 37, of New York City, who won several races out here this summer, was third, in 18:04, and Peter Heinz, 29, of New York, was fourth in 18:18.

    Patricia Fall, 44, an East Hampton summer resident, who has not run this race — or any other here — in the past, was the women’s winner in the 5K, in 20:14, followed by Ashley West, 17, East Hampton’s top girls cross-country runner, in 20:40, Karen Cotty, 47, of East Quogue, in 21:07, and Dana Cebulski, 14, a promising Bonac ninth grader, fourth in 22:07.

    Dana’s brother, Adam, 16, who runs with East Hampton’s boys team, topped the boys 16-to-18-year-old group with a 19:48. The girls winner in that group was Tess Talmage (30:23), with Victoria Nardo second at 37:33. Both are girls cross-country runners.

    Other age group winners were Julia Brierley and Cole Shaw, 12 and under; Dana Cebulski and Erik Engstrom, 13 to 15; Dominique Ficalora and Heinz, 19 to 29; Judy Murray and Brian Hennessy, 30 to 39; Claire Bastiancic and Mike Bahel, 40 to 49; Jackie Minetree and Mike Bottini, 50 to 59; Dan Kulchinsky, 60 to 69, and Len Ackerman, 70 to 79.

    The 10K age-group winners were Caroline Engelmayer, 13 to 15; Tyler Tikkanen, 16 to 18; Molly Kendall and Michael Franchi Jr., 19 to 29; Ava Locascio and Matthew Tague, 30 to 39; Patricia Foster and Craig Brierley, 40 to 49; Rosemary Camilleri and Nick Microulis, 50 to 59; Bonnie Katz and David Pitches, 60 to 69, and Blaire Stauffer, 70 to 79.

    The 5K had a walking category too, with the Castillo family pretty much dominating it. Luke Castillo, 4, was the winner among the walkers, in 36:18, with his father, Mauricio, 41, second in 36:19. Nicole Castillo, 36, won among the women in 38:38, with Corrina Castillo, 7, second in 38:39.

    Age group walking winners were Claudia Crotty, 12 and under; Lynne Calabrese, 40 to 49, and Frances Stein and Richard DeSantis, 60 to 69.

    Steve Cuomo of Shirley brought along about two dozen members of his Rolling Thunder Club, a highly competitive group of runners with disabilities, including Hampton, Franchi, his son, Steven (second in the 5K’s 19 to 29s), Marcus Sanders (second in the 5K’s 40 to 49s), and Robbie Rex Jr. (fourth in the 5K’s 19 to 29s).

    “We’re going to the national Junior Olympics in Wichita, Kans., next year,” said the elder Cuomo. “For the first year, there will be a whole gamut of competitions for the disabled there. We’ll be competing in the national cross-country championships as well. Soon, we’ll be giving a clinic for the Greater Albany Autism Group, in Troy, and the following week we’ll be doing the same thing with Doug Flutie, the football player, who has an autistic son. U.S.A. Track and Field wants to start chapters like ours now. It’s taken me 16 years. . . . Kids and coaches from all over the country will be coming to New York Tech for a clinic we’re giving there next year.”

    “Do I think progress [concerning the benefits to be had from engaging the disabled in competitive sport] is being made as fast as I want? No. But I want everything done tomorrow.”   

    When questioned on Aug. 31 about the coming fall sports season at East Hampton High School, Joe Vas, who’s in his fifth year as athletic director, was sanguine.

    “Girls volleyball is always good, boys soccer will be good, boys volleyball will be good, golf will be good, girls tennis will be good, both girls and boys cross-country should be good, girls soccer has great numbers, football has good numbers, though not a lot of size — they’ve got to stay healthy — field hockey, whose numbers have been down the past couple of years, has a good turnout again, and, of course, girls swimming should be very good.”

    The football team was to have participated last Thursday in a four-way scrimmage at Southampton High School, along with the Mariners, Greenport, and Hampton Bays.

    A preseason pick to finish last among the 12 schools in its division, the Bonackers, who consequently won’t have to face any of the top three — Sayville, Huntington, and Bellport — won’t be pressured to live up to great expectations.

    Speaking of football, and of concussions, Vas, who noted that “you don’t have to play football or lacrosse to get them — in fact, you don’t even have to be hit in the head to bruise your brain,” said that Randi Cherill, the school’s trainer, had recently given “Impact” neuro cognitive function tests to all the high school’s athletes, with the exception of tennis and track, as part of the required physicals.

    “I love it,” Cherill later said of the test that is under the aegis of St. Charles Hospital. “It tests memory, recall, reaction time . . . it takes over 30 minutes to administer, and it establishes a baseline, so a comparison can be made should you get injured. Most of the schools in Section XI are doing it.”

    Back to the fall’s prospects, Vas said, “We’ve got the numbers to be competitive across the board. How well we do in each of the [11] sports will depend on the kids. We certainly have the opportunity to be successful.”

    Giving a talk to about 200 athletes gathered around him on the high school’s turf field early last Thursday morning, the A.D. said, “If you’re all-in, things will generally go your way. We’re building a strong program here. I’m really excited. We have an outstanding coaching staff, and every varsity coach who needs one will have a paid assistant. . . . Our year will go as our senior leadership goes. If you reach for the sky, we’ll skyrocket. We go as you go. And remember, my door is always open.”

    Among the new coaches is Michelle Kennedy, who has taken over girls tennis from Jim Nicoletti. Kennedy, who’s the school librarian, played the sport at Salve Regina. She may be assisted by one of the East Hampton Indoor/Outdoor club’s pros.    

    Kalie Peters will assist Becky Schwartz with the varsity field hockey team; Robyn Mott will be the junior varsity field hockey coach; Will Collins will be the jayvee boys volleyball coach, and Josh Brussell, the former jayvee coach, will assist the boys varsity coach, Dan Weaver.

    Sara Faraone will assist Kathy McGeehan with the varsity girls volleyball team, Nicole Calloway will be the girls jayvee volleyball coach, Tiffany Lamprecht will assist Mike Vitulli with the varsity girls soccer team, and John McGeehan, the girls swimming coach, will be assisted by Meg Preiss and Angelika Cruz.

    On Friday afternoon Vas said there was to be a “family community track night,” in which, from 3 to 6 , there were to have been various competitions for kids of all ages.

    A committee, he added, had been named to consider nominations for Bonac’s first Hall Of Fame class.

    Jim Nicoletti is the president, Ellen Cooper and Ed Bahns are the vice presidents, and Kathy McGeehan is the treasurer. The board members are Dick Cooney and Mike Burns, both former East Hampton School District athletic directors, Bill Herzog, Erin Abran, and Sandy Vorpahl.

    “There will be two longtime East Hampton residents appointed too,” he said. “Our plan is to announce the members of the first class at our June athletic awards dinner and to induct them at the following homecoming. . . . People can nominate athletes, entire teams, coaches. . . .”

    This year’s homecoming will be on Sept. 24. Eastport-South Manor will be the football team’s opponent, in a night game. “Just about every team will have a contest during homecoming week, we’ll have a carnival, a dance, a bonfire. . . It should be a lot of fun.”

    Concerning another subject, Vas said he will buy new schowcases for the school’s trophies, plaques, and memorabilia, rather than stick with the old ones. “I’d like to do it right,” he said.    

    McLain Ward, who had to be feeling a bit effervescent after sweeping with characteristic aplomb through the Hampton Classic’s major prize money classes last week, a streak capped Sunday afternoon by a record sixth Hampton Classic Grand Prix win (and third in a row), cradled in his lap the magnum of Louis Roederer Champagne he’d been given, popped the sizable cork, and invited those who’d attended the show-ending press conference to share in a round.

    Multiple wins and high placings are nothing new to the taut, sandy-haired 34-year-old two-time Olympic gold medalist from Brewster, N.Y. Considered America’s top show jumping rider and among the top three in the world, it could fairly be said he outdid even himself in the foreshortened show’s five-day run, winning not only the $250,000 FTI Grand Prix, but also the $50,000 Spy Coast Farm Grand Prix Qualifier, the $30,000 Nicolock Open Jumper Challenge (in which he also took third and fourth), and the $15,000 Prudential Douglas Elliman (1.45-meter) Open.

    This is not to mention a second-place finish in the $7,500 Pilatus (1.45-meter) Open Jumper competition and a fourth in the $30,000 Split Rock Farm 6-year-old Young Jumper Class, Round 3.

    With the $75,000 he won on Grant Road Partners’ German-bred grey, Antares F, in the Grand Prix, besting a cordial rival, Kent Farrington, and Uceko, “by less than a stride,” Ward rode away, all told, with about $115,000 in prize money.

    Asked what made him so good — Ward seems to stand in relation to his competitors as Tiger Woods once did in golf — Marty Bauman, the Classic’s press officer, said, “McLain’s not just a great rider — he’s a great horseman. He treats his horses as the athletes they are, 52 weeks a year. He never overuses them — he trains them with care so that they always peak at the right times.”

    Ward, himself, who won the Grand Prix jump-off by two-10ths of a second over Farrington, said he considered the Classic “the best show in the country,” and that, consequently, “I always come with my best horses. I feel the event is worthy of that.”

    Bauman, despite being a great fan of Ward’s, confessed at the press conference that he and others thought Farrington, winner of the recent King George Grand Prix in England, who went first among seven horse-and-rider combinations in the jump-off, might have it sewed up with his and Uceko’s 32.96 second circuit of the pared-down seven obstacle course.

    Lisa Deslauriers and Vicomte D, the second to go, were eliminated when her horse balked and threw her off at the fourth obstacle, the 1.69-meter red brick wall. Norman Dello Joio and Notre Star dropped a rail with two fences left. That brought on Antares F and Ward, who traced his winning time of 32.78 seconds to having shaved a stride — or, as he was to say later, maybe even less than a stride — between the second jump-off obstacle, the ASPCA wall, and the third, a double vertical near the center of the V.I.P. tent.

    At that point, with three competitors — Audrey Coulter, Lucy Davis, and Ljubov Kochetova — remaining, the announcer said they should keep in mind Ward and Antares F had landed on the far side of the red brick wall at 19 seconds.

    Coulter, an 18-year-old San Franciscan riding Victory DA, trailed Ward by three seconds at the wall, and pulled the last rail. Davis, also 18, from Los Angeles, and Nemo 119 skirted the wall entirely, and Kochetova, the Classic’s first Russian competitor, and her 7-year-old Oldenburg stallion, the youngest horse in the Grand Prix, went clean in 40.11 seconds, which was good for third place.

    Thirty-three horse-and-rider combinations contested Guilherme Jorge’s tough 13-fence (16-effort) first round, and most came to grief at one point or another, with the 1.6-meter Jaguar vertical and the Nespresso oxer near the in-gate, the water-reflecting Liverpool combination midway through the course, and the airy “bridge” off a 270-degree turn over worn ground in front of the V.I.P. tent taking most of the hits. The triple combination that preceded the last jump, the massive square FTI oxer, figured to be a problem, but was not so.

    In former days the Grand Prix qualifier winner would have been the last to go out on the course, though nowadays the order of go is determined by a draw. Ward, who went 12th, going clear in 80.98 seconds, well within the allotted 86, said he didn’t mind at all being in the middle.

    “Besides McLain Ward there’s one other name that comes to mind this week — Irene,” Bauman said before the Grand Prix’s top three answered questions. “Seven days ago at this very moment we weren’t sure we would be here today, but the fact we are is a reflection of the Hampton Classic’s leadership. In Shanette Barth Cohen we’ve got the most amazing executive director of any horse show anywhere.”

    For her part, Barth Cohen said she’d never doubted that there would be a show, though the question as to when it would begin [Aug. 31 as it turned out] remained open as the hurricane turned tropical storm approached.

    Dennis Shaughnessy, who heads FTI Consulting, said he knew the Classic’s staff was able, “but I didn’t know they were magicians,” he added, concerning the efficient tear-down and rapid resurrection of the show’s 100 tents and 1,600 stables. At 5:30 p.m. Sunday [Aug. 28], you would have thought there would be no way that they’d ever be able to hold a world class horse show here.”

Thursday, September 15

BOYS VOLLEYBALL, East Hampton at Huntington, 4 p.m.

GOLF, Ross vs. East Hampton, South Fork Country Club, Amagansett, 4 p.m.

BOYS SOCCER, Center Moriches at East Hampton, nonleague, 4:30 p.m.

GIRLS VOLLEYBALL, Rocky Point at East Hampton, 5 p.m.

FIELD HOCKEY, William Floyd at Pierson, Mashashimuet Park, Sag Harbor, 4:30 p.m.

Friday, September 16

BOYS VOLLEYBALL, East Hampton at Sayville, 4 p.m.

FIELD HOCKEY, Greenport-Southold at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

GIRLS TENNIS, East Hampton at William Floyd, 4:30 p.m.

Saturday, September 17

GIRLS VOLLEYBALL, East Hampton at Eastport-South Manor, 9 a.m.

GIRLS SOCCER, Pierson-Bridgehampton at East Hampton, nonleague, 10 a.m.

FOOTBALL, Kings Park at East Hampton, 2 p.m.

Monday, September 19

BOYS SOCCER, Bayport-Blue Point at East Hampton, and Pierson at Ross, 4:30 p.m.

GIRLS VOLLEYBALL, East Hampton at Elwood-John Glenn, 4 p.m.

FIELD HOCKEY, William Floyd at East Hampton, 4:30 p.m.

GIRLS TENNIS, Ross at East Hampton, 4 p.m.

Tuesday, September 20

GIRLS CROSS-COUNTRY, East Hampton vs. Mount Sinai, Sunken Meadow State Park, Kings Park, 4:30 p.m.

BOYS CROSS-COUNTRY, Rocky Point vs. East Hampton, Indian Island County Park, Riverhead, 4:30 p.m.

GIRLS SOCCER, East Hampton at Westhampton, 4:30 p.m.

GOLF, Southampton vs. East Hampton, South Fork Country Club, Amagansett, 4 p.m.

FIELD HOCKEY, Port Jefferson at Pierson, Mashashimuet Park, Sag Harbor, 4:30 p.m.

Wednesday, September 21

BOYS SOCCER, East Hampton at Shoreham-Wadng River, 4:30 p.m.

GIRLS VOLLEYBALL, East Hampton at Copiague, nonleague, 5 p.m.

GIRLS TENNIS, Westhampton at Ross, 4 p.m.

    Topping a field of about 800 runners and walkers, Nick Ellenoff, the 17-year-old Trinity School senior who the week before had won the Strides For Life 3-miler, glided to the shaded Ellen’s [5K] Run finish line near the old entrance to Southampton Hospital Sunday morning in 17 minutes and 27 seconds.

    The personable winner, who is an all-state competitor in cross-country and track with a personal-best 4:20 in the mile, said he had run faster at this race last year, but last year he had John Honerkamp — the winner in 15:45 — and Angel Rojas to contend with.

    Honerkamp, a coach at St. John’s who placed fourth in the Olympic 800-meter trials in 1996, did not show this year. “I was kind of hoping he would,” said Ellenoff, who, on realizing he was more or less on his own that hot, humid morning, did not push himself much after the first mile.

    East Hampton had a good showing, led by Jessie van Binsbergen, now a veterinary doctor in Hoboken, N.J., who won among the women and was 13th over all, in 19:35.

    Among Bonac’s age-group winners that day were Olivia Boccia, 11-and-under girls; Fiona Moore, 40 to 44 women; Mike Bahel, 45 to 49 men; Diane O’Donnell, 60 to 64 women, and Howard Lebwith (the race director), 80-plus men. Moreover, Mike Bottini (55 to 59 men) and Evan Boccia (11-and-under boys) were runners-up, and Blaire Stauffer, a 78-year-old Sag Harborite, won the men’s 75 to 79 group, and was 172nd over all, in 27:46.

    Asked if he’d seen Andy Neidnig, who turned 92 on July 3, Stauffer said he had recently, on Sag Harbor’s Long Island Avenue. “Andy said he couldn’t stop to talk, that he had to keep moving. If you want to talk to him, you know, you have to move along with him.”

    Stauffer added that Howard Lebwith had started the race that day, “but nobody knows he did because his bullhorn went down.”

    “It’s the first time I’ve raced in a year,” said van Binsbergen, who, because of her veterinary duties has “not had much time for running.”

    “Last year, I was fourth, but there were some faster women here last year.”

    Van Binsbergen spoke for a bit afterward with her former East Hampton High School coach, Diane O’Donnell, who was making her first appearance in a race in two years, having overcome in the interim two broken ankles and an Achilles tendon tear.

    Besides being happy that she’d finished, O’Donnell said she’s looking forward to the girls cross-country team she’s to coach this fall at East Hampton High. “We’ll have all of our top five back, including Ashley [West, who’s been training hard and winning races here this summer], and I’m very hopeful we’ll be able to get Dana Cebulski [a top runner the middle school the past two years] to come out.”

    When Ellenoff’s bright orange running shoes were remarked upon, his mother, Sabrina, said, with a laugh, “You can only wear those if you run fast — otherwise people would think you were a jerk.”

    The young winner, whose favorite race is the mile, said he’ll be running longer distances this year, including the 3,000 and 5K, at his coach’s instance. As for which college he might attend, the Trinity senior said it would depend on where he was recruited.

    In the aftermath of the popular race, Charlie van der Horst, a medical professor at the University of North Carolina who trains with about 15 others in the summer with John Conner on East Hampton High’s track, discovered a glitch in the timing that had resulted in some daughters being credited with their fathers’ times.

    It was corrected, but not before Craig Brierley told his 9-year-old daughter, Julia, that he had won her age bracket.

    Ellen’s Run benefits the Ellen P. Hermanson Foundation’s work in breast cancer research, prevention, and outreach and the new Ellen Hermanson Breast Center at Southampton Hospital.  Julie Ratner, who founded the race 16 years ago in memory of her late sister, has said that over the years more than $3 million has been raised by the foundation, $1 million of which has been donated to Southampton Hospital.

    The race encourages survivors to take part. There were 36 of them this year, topped by Jimmy Perreca, 66, of South Beach. Those from around here included Deborah Donohue, Arlene Makl, Ralph Kotkov, Mary Ellen McGuire, Vicki Durand, Sandra Gamble, Kathryn Heineman-Locov, Marilyn Scherr, Joan Garro, Diane Lewis, Mary Lang, Christine Ambrose, and Barbara Borsack, an East Hampton Village Board member who once again headed up the Strong Connections team, 80 strong this year, whose sponsors were the East Hampton Village and Town Police Benevolent Associations, the Old Montauk Athletic Club, Computer Professionals, the Strong Agency, Strong Brothers Inc., and Shirt Tag LLC.

    Among those whom Borsack had encouraged to walk the 3.1-mile course was this paper’s Bridget LeRoy, who later said she’d been “beaten by a Pomeranian,” and wrote about her participation in The Star’s “Relay” column this week.

    Forewarned regarding Hurricane Irene, Shanette Barth Cohen, the Hampton Classic’s executive director, on Friday announced the cancellation of Opening Day, which was to have been Sunday, and resolved to restart the ordinarily weeklong hunter-jumper show on Wednesday, Aug. 31.

    The three-day postponement was apparently a first for this prestigious show, which in its modern era — first at the Topping Riding Club in Sagaponack, then at Dune Alpin Farm in East Hampton, and, from 1982 at the 60-acre showgrounds on Snake Hollow Road in Bridgehampton — has been no stranger to the vagaries of nature.

    Jean Lindgren, who, with her husband, Tony Hitchcock, oversaw the Classic for almost 30 years, before Barth Cohen took over, said during a telephone conversation Saturday that she remembered all sorts of Classic disasters, “but, somehow, the show,” she said, “always went on,” as apparently its doing this year too.

    According to the Classic’s Web site’s history section, “the year the show was expanded from a one-day one to a rated five-day show and moved from the Topping Riding Club to Dune Alpin, a hurricane hit just before it was to open, taking down all the tents. They were re-erected and the show started a day and a half late.”

    “I remember that hurricane — it arrived almost unannounced,” said Lindgren. “Most people had vans for the horses, so they put them in them and got out. Axes were taken to the tents. They had the show anyway, but without the tents. Tony and I were the caterers that year. We were the only food on the grounds and the power was out. We went to King Kullen, which was where T.J. Maxx is now. They opened the store for us and we went through the dark aisles with flashlights as they added things up. It was all very exciting.”

    And the tornado? “I don’t remember the year, but there was one. They were putting the tents up. They hadn’t gotten the stalls in. But the tents all went up in the air. Bud Topping, who was the groundskeeper, ducked under his tractor when he saw grandstand seating fly by. His assistant . . . just stood there, oblivious. I don’t think he was very observant. We had an office on Main Street in Bridgehampton. Everything was fine there, and when David Wright, who was the show’s second manager, phoned and told us what was happening, we went, ‘Ha-ha-ha.’ He had a reputation as a joker. But when we went over, it was as he’d said, everything was gone! Completely destroyed. It was a couple of days before the show was to begin, the horses weren’t there yet. Tony was calling people in the party business, asking them if they had any tents lying around in their basements. We took anything we could get and, yes, the show went on.”

    “The first year we were in Bridgehampton, I remember seeing Tinka Topping and Agnetta Currey up to their knees in mud, trying to divert the water so it wouldn’t come into the tents. Remember, this had been a potato field. I remember riders helping to push an ambulance off after a rider had fallen. I’d just bought a new car and there was mud over the hood and I remember Bud pulling me out. . . .”

    “One year,” Lindgren continued, “we had to cancel the Friday classes, which included the Grand Prix qualifying class, because of the threat of a hurricane or a tropical storm. It was a big deal because of that qualifying class. But people called and said they had parties arranged and couldn’t they come anyway? We said we didn’t mind. The tents were holding.”

    Speaking of tents, she said that “they’ll be able to put them back up easily this year — they’ve flattened the stalls and they’ve lashed the tents on top of them.”

    Last year, she said, Hurricane Earl, which was moving up the East Coast as the show was under way, had Barth Cohen and her staff wondering whether they’d have to close early.

    As it turned out, Earl was the hurricane that wasn’t, though the results of some hunter classes were doubled to make sure things went smoothly. There were no cancellations, although the Grand Prix Qualifier was moved ahead a day. 

    And again, the show went on.

    Albert Woods, an 82-year-old swimmer who was named the Old Montauk Athletic Club’s athlete-of-the-year at its December awards dinner, feting the fact that he had as an 81-year-old won six national championships, has done it again.

    In the recent national long course championships at Auburn University’s 50-meter, eight-lane pool bordered by stands that seat a couple of thousand, Woods won all three of his breaststroke events, the 50, 100, and 200, placed second in the 50 and 100 freestyle, and was a member of three of the championship Georgia masters group’s winning relay teams — the 200 men’s freestyle, the 200 mixed freestyle, and the 200 men’s medley.

    As a result of his feats, Woods has been named — for the first time — a U.S. Masters Swimming All American, an honor he especially prizes given the fact that he did not swim in college, as did many of his peers, and only began to seriously pursue the sport after retiring about a decade ago.

    In a letter to the Sag Harborite this past spring, Rob Butcher, Masters Swimming’s executive director, noted that Woods had the fastest times in three 80 to 84-year-old age group events in 2010, adding that “while other athletes talk about being number-one, you are!”

    “You stand as a true example of what can be accomplished if mind and body join together while a clear goal is kept in focus.”

    Used to training in the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter’s 25-yard pool, which was “much less than half the length of the one at Auburn that I just swam in,” Woods, who specializes in the breaststroke, said, “The bad news for me was that I wasn’t able to push off and coast as I would have been able to in a 25-yard pool where the turns are to my advantage, but on the other hand you do have more of a chance to get into the rhythm of the stroke in a long course pool. There are only two of these meets a year, the long course nationals and the short course nationals. Last year, this meet was in Puerto Rico. I won all three breaststroke events there too.”

    Describing himself as a sprinter, Woods nevertheless swims long distances as well as sprints during the course of his regimen, which he has worked out with the Y’s aquatics director, Tom Cohill. “Early in the season I train for endurance. I work out on average four to five days a week at the Y. I do resistance weight training too, and stretch. The closer I get to competitions, the more speed work I do.”

    He had joined the championship, 97-strong Georgia masters team, which is based in Atlanta, so that he could compete in relays as well. “Forty of the 97 members won gold medals at the long course meet,” said Woods, who won six of them.

    While his times had been pretty close to the ones he’d done last year, he bettered his previous best in the 50 free. “I was seeded at 40 seconds, and I bettered that. I was 39-plus, which broke the Georgia state record for my age group. All the other times I swam were Georgia age group records too. The winner in the 50 free was 38-plus. I was in the far left lane, and since I breathe to the left I couldn’t see anyone else. He was next to me, and could see me just fine!”

    He added that it was nice at his age to have competition.

    With some leeway in the 200 mixed freestyle relay, the age of whose competitors could not be less than 320 all told, “we had as one member of our team a 95-year-old woman, Anne Dunivin, the oldest member of the Georgia masters squad. We balanced her out with a mere 74-year-old, Nana Whalen, who, of course, was a much faster swimmer. But Anne Dunivin did just fine. She holds all the Georgia records.”

    As for the breaststroke, which Woods described as swimming’s “hardest, most complicated and controversial stroke,” Woods said “there are two approaches. One involves coming out of the water quite high and diving forward from that point. Your mouth is a foot-plus above the surface of the water. But any picking up of the head tends to make the legs go down — the body follows the head. So I try to get air without raising my head. The old frog kick has been de-emphasized. Instead, you try to keep a narrow silhouette to keep your body in a straight glide position. My kick, with the heels up behind my rear end, is strong, and rather than the old long sideways motion, my arms go out and back quickly.”

    He hadn’t started out as a breaststroker, but as a freestyler, Woods said. As a 70-year-old reacquainting himself with the sport, he “couldn’t swim longer distances than the 50 and 100 free. I didn’t have the wind for the 200. But I wanted to do more events, so I decided to try the breaststroke. I had no idea I’d wind up being so good at it.” 

     Marty Bauman, the Hampton Classic’s press officer, was on the Bridgehampton showgrounds at 5:30 a.m. Monday, as were scores of workers and volunteers, who by midmorning had most of the some 100 tents that had been taken down in advance of Hurricane Irene’s arrival back up.

    “It’s been unbelievable, incredible,” Bauman said of the effort. “It shows you what happens when everyone pitches in. We told the competitors that there were to be no horses here until Tuesday.”

    Steve Stephens, the show’s general manager, estimated that “there were 60 working on the tents and two to three dozen helping in other ways. We took down 1,600 stalls and now we’re putting them back up. We’re on generator power at the moment . . . on manpower, really.”

    “We put out the word on Thursday that the show wouldn’t begin until Monday,” said Bauman, “but then, by Friday morning it became obvious that we’d have to move it back more, to Wednesday. Safety overrules everything. Most horse shows are Wednesday-through-Sunday anyway, so the competitors are used to this.”

    Moreover, said Stephens, “not one class has been canceled yet.” Which meant, he added, that on Grand Prix Sunday, rather than two rings, all six would be in use.

    “We’ll have all our local classes, the disability classes . . . everything,” said Bauman. “The riders with disabilities will be competing on Grand Prix Sunday, which I’m sure they’ll enjoy. There will be a lot going on this coming weekend.”

    The schedule, revised by Stephens, was to begin yesterday with many of the hunter classes that would have been held Sunday, including the Wolffer Estate Open Jumper and Pilatus Open Jumper classes in the Grand Prix ring.

    Today, as was the case yesterday, there will be action in six rings, with four classes, including the $10,000 Sam Edelman Equitation championship, in the Grand Prix ring, and the $2,500 Marshall & Sterling Adult Amateur Hunter Classic in the Hunter 2 ring. Short stirrup classes for 9 through 12-year-old riders are to be held in the Annex, beginning at 8 a.m.

    The $50,000 Spy Coast Farm Grand Prix qualifier — a class from which Sunday’s $250,000 FTI Grand Prix horse and rider combinations are to be picked — is to be held tomorrow at 1 p.m., preceded by the $10,000 Sotheby’s International Realty welcome stake at 8, and the $15,000 Autism Speaks Speed Derby.

    An exhibitors party, with a horseless horse show, is to be held tomorrow from 5 to 8 p.m.

    The $30,000 Nicolock Open Jumper Challenge, normally the big class of Opening Day, is to be held in the Grand Prix ring Saturday at 2 p.m., preceded by the $20,000 SHF Enterprises 5-Year-Old Young Jumper championship finals and the $30,000 Split Rock Farm 6-Year-Old Young Jumper championship finals. That day there will also be children’s jumper, junior jumper, and adult amateur jumper classes in Jumper Ring 2, and hunter classes in all three hunter rings, including the $50,000 USHJA International Hunter Derby in the Hunter 1 Ring at 2 p.m. The Grand Hunter championship, the Leading Hunter Rider, the Best Junior Rider, and the Leading Junior Equitation awards are to be given out following the Hunter Derby.

    The popular leadline classes for 2 through 7-year-olds judged by two-time Olympic gold medalist Joe Fargis are to be held Sunday from 8 a.m. in the Hunter 1 Ring. Last year, the 98 young competitors set a record. The 125 entries this year sets another. The $10,000 Hermes Hunter Classic is to follow at 10:30, and the Long Island riders with disabilities classes are to begin at 2.

    Meanwhile, action in the Grand Prix ring will begin at 8 with the $30,000 Brown Harris Stevens 7 and 8-year-old Young Jumper championship finals, to be followed by the $25,000 Carolex Show Jumping Derby, the amateur-owner (1.40-meter) championship, the junior jumper (1.40-meter) championship, and, at 2, the show’s premier class, the aforementioned $250,000 FTI Grand Prix, which is also an FEI World Cup qualifier.

    Also on the final day, from 8 a.m., the $2,500 Marshall & Sterling Adult Amateur Jumper Classic and the $2,500 Marshall & Sterling Children’s Jumper Classic will be held in Jumper Ring 2, and children’s hunter classes, including the $2,500 Marshall & Sterling Children’s Hunter Classic (Ponies) and the $2,500 Marshall & Sterling Children’s Hunter Classic (Horses) are to be held in the Hunter 2 Ring.

    “When everyone arrives on Tuesday,” said Bauman, “I’ll bet they’ll say it doesn’t look like there’d ever been a hurricane.”

    Ryan Pilla’s Car Doctor World garage is on Scuttlehole Road, not far from the late lamented Bridgehampton Race Circuit (now a golf course) where in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s, the top sports car drivers in the world used to gather.

    The energetic auto restorer’s neat-as-a-pin garage where he tunes up and repairs the racy cars of a high-end clientele, and where drivers trade fast-lane stories at a shiny bar on Thursday evenings and Saturday afternoons, has on its walls black-and-white pictorial murals of “the Bridge” back in the day when Walt Hansgen, Briggs Cunningham, Phil Hill, Jim Hall, Stirling Moss, Mario Andretti, Scott McClaren, Dan Gurney, Mark Donohue, Roger Penske, Sam Posey, and Paul Newman used to race there.

    And when Pilla, himself, set a four-door sedan speed record in an M3 BMW, zipping around the challenging eight-turn, 2.85-mile course in 1 minute and 43 seconds.

    “So what did you do on the straight?” his visitor asked him the other day.

    “On the straight, I’d say I got it up to . . . about 165 miles per hour,” said Pilla, who had the week before torn over the Bonneville salt flats in Utah at just that speed in a four-cylinder Mazda MX5 Spec Miata that he’d set up for a client, Harvey Siegel, a 78-year-old racetrack owner and Bridgehampton veteran who can now scratch “set world speed record” off his bucket list.

    Siegel did it first and then Pilla, both of them erasing the former record of 157.9 miles per hour held by a factory Honda.

    “It was the first time in history that this street car, which can only get up to 105 miles per hour ordinarily, went at such speeds,” said Pilla, whose father, Carlo, once was Jaguar’s top test-driver. “And amazingly we did it without having tested it. The closest track is Lime Rock, and that’s about five hours away. On paper it looked good. That we were able to set the record was a testament to our engineering, but there’s no substitute for seat time.”

    Pilla said he had “a great team of seven” headed by his crew chief, Rod Davidson. “We had the car transported out in that van, and we all flew into Salt Lake and rented a car and put our foot to the floor. The speed limit out there is 75. Normally, it’s a two-hour drive, but we did it in an hour and a half. It’s a drive-in, drive-out town, like East Hampton. They have these speed weeks once a year. There were lots of different classes. Some world records were broken, some weren’t.”

    “It was definitely like being on the moon,” Pilla said, when asked what the salt flats were like. “They’re 7,000 feet up — the sun doesn’t go that high. You can almost can see the curvature of the earth. You’ve got to have sunglasses it’s so bright.”

    “There’s a three-mile track. You’ve got one mile to get up to speed. From one to two miles they take your speed. And from mile two to three you slow down. I’d liken it to a religious experience. It was as if you’d been taken back in time and there was nothing around you. Like being in an old western movie set, but with no buildings.”

    “Our motto here is ‘If you can dream it, we can build it,’ and we proved that the other day. We went out there and realized Harvey’s dream, we conquered. He wants to go back next year, but this time in a turbo-charged Miata capable of doing 212. And this time, without fail, we’ll have Mazda’s support.”

    The sleek red-and-yellow record-breaking car, Pilla explained, looking down at its two-liter engine, was “normally aspirated — there was no forced induction of air, no super charger or turbo charger. For next year, we’ll put a big turbo here, which will take the exhaust air and force it back down the engine’s throat, as it were, for more power. The car will be ‘blown.’ That’s what they call it.”

    “We wanted to go 160,” he said. “See, it says 2 160 on the side. But we made certain adjustments that enabled us to top that goal by another five miles per hour. We changed the suspension to make it more aerodynamic. We changed all the engine parameters — the air/fuel mixture, the timing. . . . We changed the transmission gear ratios and the differential gear ratios so we could get that perfect combination, so we could get as close as we could to terminal velocity.”

    “A boat has a hull speed,” he explained. “It can only go so fast. It’s the same with a plane’s fuselage — I’m a pilot too, you know — or a car. In the end, aerodynamics wins out over power. So, yes, I’d be shocked if somebody tops our record.”

    The recent success, he added, had revived his interest in racing. “I haven’t done anything since Daytona, in 2006. I want to see if I’m a has-been or not. This was a stepping stone for us back into road racing. I’ll be in an S.C.C.A. eight-race series from Canada to California from now until the first of the year.”

    Two other MX5s — one for Pilla and one that’s being rented by Paul Weismann — are being set up for the S.C.C.A. series in whose races Pilla expects to top out at 130 in the draft. “We’re making them as aerodynamic as they can be so they’ll punch a big hole through the air,” he said. “Also, these are being set up for lefts and rights. Those cars and the one we set the record with look the same, but everything is different. It’s like comparing a sailboat to a high-horsepower motorboat.”

    The Bonneville experience had also “jump-started” an idea that he’d been kicking around for a while, Pilla said, and, consequently, beginning in 2012, he will offer clients over the course of a year, in cars he’s prepared, “the three most amazing motor sports experiences you can have in the world — driving off-road in the Baja peninsula, driving in a road racing car on the biggest track in the world, the Nurburgring in Nurburg, Germany [a track that was nicknamed ‘The Green Hell’ by Jackie Stewart], and the experience of traveling at high speed on the salt flats at Bonneville.”

    “Those three adventures,” he continued, “would be the Nirvana of racing and motor sports entertainment. After that you’d say that when it comes to speed you’ve done everything!”