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KENNEWICK -- Lamb Weston has established its identity in the kitchen.
Tuesday afternoon, the company showed it's ready to make its presence known on the water.
The Water Follies board of directors announced that ConAgra Foods Lamb Weston will sponsor the Columbia Cup for the next two years.
"ConAgra Foods Lamb Weston is proud to be a premier sponsor for Columbia Cup 2009-10," said Dave Sanford, a vice president of Human Resources at ConAgra Foods Lamb Weston. "Lamb Weston sponsorship of the Columbia Cup is a part of our largest commitment to support the Tri-Cities and the surrounding Columbia Basin community."
In 2007, Lamb Weston was instrumental in preventing the bankrupt Water Follies Association from discontinuing the race, stepping in to replace Budweiser as the primary corporate sponsor. Lamb Weston has sponsored the Columbia Cup for the last two years, which included an estimated attendance of nearly 60,000 people this summer.
The American Boat Racing Association, the governing body behind unlimited and unlimited lights hydroplane racing, has six stops on the unlimited circuit, and Tri-Cities is considered an integral and historical site.
"I think we're the model for what the ABRA is trying to present to people, " said Mike Denslow, a vice president on the Tri-City Water Follies board, who, along with Water Follies Event Director Kathy Powell, met recently in San Diego with other key members of the hydro community to continue building the sport. "(Kathy) and I are going to be on a committee to help bring other race sites like ours to the series. We have all these things we have experience doing that we can share. It's not proprietary information."
Part of that committee's purpose will be to reach out to new cities with the thought of adding them as a possible future circuit stop, including representatives from Dubai and New Zealand.
"It's a more proactive approach than in years past," Denslow said. "Before it was owners wanting to spend as little money as possible to get the most returns. Now it's everyone working together as a whole. Our committee meetings are going to start on a national level right away."
Denslow, who will become Water Follies President on January 1, 2009 -- replacing Ron Hue -- is hopeful that Tri-City race fans can once again count on the full complement of boats for the 2009 Lamb Weston Columbia Cup, which will be July 24-26.
"That's always the question, but we always get the most boats to our site, along with Seattle," Denslow said.
The hydro circuit had a rough year in 2008, as high winds put a premature end to the Gold Cup in Detroit in mid-July, and the Thunder on the Ohio in Evansville, Ind., is still fighting through $50,000 in debt from last year's event that has left the city pondering its future as a circuit stop. Evansville has been a part of the hydro circuit since 1978.
But the ABRA is hopeful they can help find a way to keep Evansville on the schedule.
"Other sites are all community festivals similar to ours, and people rally around those festivals," Powell said. "I heard it said that the hydros were in (Evansville's) blood. It's a part of their DNA."
NOTE: The festivities at San Diego's Bayfair included a tribute to the late U-10 owner Kim Gregory, who died on Aug. 21 at 58 years old. "All the boats fired their motors at the same time, and they put some ashes out in Mission Bay," Denslow said. "It was a tearjerker."
