27 replies to this topic

[Paul Hartshorne]

Hi. I've just watched the podium ceremony from the Imola F3000. The second-place driver (I won't spoil it by telling you who!) dropped his delicate-looking glass trophy, smashing it to shards. As if that wasn't enough, the winner also dropped HIS trophy when leaving the podium, shattering that one too

Can anyone remember anything similar happening in the past?

Best

[Psychoman]

The closest I can remember was Sergei Federov denting the Stanley Cup a few years back--although that's another story...

------------------
"Hey there, all you middle men
Throw away your fancy clothes
And while you're out there sittin' on a fence
So get off your ass and come down here
'Cause rock 'n' roll ain't no riddle man
To me it makes good, good sense"
-Brian Johnson
SHAMELESS PROMOTION--check out my website! Like the Atlas newsroom, only worse!
http://mrpsycho61636...d.com/home.html

[Ray Bell]

Wasn't there someone who gave away their Olympic gold medal in disgust over something?
Closest I can think of..

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Life and love are mixed with pain...

[Psychoman]

That was Muhammad Ali's medal if memory serves right...

------------------
"Hey there, all you middle men
Throw away your fancy clothes
And while you're out there sittin' on a fence
So get off your ass and come down here
'Cause rock 'n' roll ain't no riddle man
To me it makes good, good sense"
-Brian Johnson
SHAMELESS PROMOTION--check out my website! Like the Atlas newsroom, only worse!
http://mrpsycho61636...d.com/home.html

[f li]

Wasn't there a driver who had all of his silver trophies melted into a coffee table?

[Ray Bell]

But what an appropriate thing to do - make something useful instead of mere ornaments of them!
Then there was Jo Bonnier, who bolted his McLaren BRM up on the wall of his living room.

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Life and love are mixed with pain...

[Mike Argetsinger]

I think the silver trophies made in to a coffee table may be Stirling Moss. At least he always said he was going to do just that. Perhaps he did. I actually saw Jo Bonnier's McLaren on his wall and it had the effect of a work of art which was just what he had in mind, I'm sure. I had forgotten that it was a BRM engine, I had in my mind that it was a Cosworth - but you're probably right. It has been a while. Although it's getting a little far afield from smashing trophies, I had a personal come-uppance on the subject. My first year back from Europe('78) I had the good luck to win a Formula Ford race at Watkins Glen. I was quite thrilled about the whole thing - especially winning at that track - and although you never think about trophies, I clearly remember thinking, as I walked over to collect mine, that this one would be special. Watkins Glen had, from the the very beginning, always given really great silver trophies - Paul Revere Bowls, etc. The trophy person greeted me with the announcement she had good news. She knew everyone must be tired of the same old stuff that had been given forever and she had scrapped the tradition in favor of something we could all really take pride in. She presented me a 3-foot tall extravaganza with red glass columns supporting a generic looking race car. The car had been inserted in place in lieu of what could, I suppose, have been a bowler, a golfer or a tap-dancer. Served me right!

[Walrus]

They didn`t actually drop them, the glasses broke-both still hold little pieces of glass in their hands when the glass was already in million pieces on the floor.

[Don Capps]

Moss did melt down most of his trophies to make a coffee table. And Niki Lauda used to give his trophies to the gent who owned a garage at the bottom of the hill near his house. In exchange he got car washes, servicing, and so forth. Typical Lauda. I also recall that the trophy Gilles "won" at Imola was never collected by him after the race. I also wonder about all those bottles of champagne that Reims used to give to the pole winners...

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Yr fthfl & hmbl srvnt,

Don Capps

Semper Gumbi: If this was easy, we’d have the solution already…

[This message has been edited by Don Capps (edited 04-11-2000).]

[Paul Hartshorne]

Alan Jones was given a horse as prize after winning a GP in 1979 or '80 (maybe one of our antipodean members can remember which?). He had it shipped to Australian and later broke his hip when he fell from it prior to his 1983 comeback.

He was quoted as saying that the horse had a lucky escape as it may have ended up on a dinner plate if a French driver had won ;)

Best

[Ray Bell]

That's Alan, all right!
He loves the French, makes a point of mispronouncing Peugeot... caustic remarks about everyone from his father to women in general... a guy who really speaks his mind, and I look forward to his comments on the GP broadcasts.

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Life and love are mixed with pain...

[desmo]

Actually I have never heard Peugeot pronounced correctly by a native English speaker.

[Huw Jenjin]

Didn't one of the McLaren drivers drop the trophy into the crowd just to piss Ron Dennis off?

[nhbrian]

At one of the recent winter Olympics (Albertville?), the medals were made of lead crystal, and I remember at least one of them being dropped and shattered.

[Art]

Peugeo.

How about Pooojoooo with the oomlout.

Art

[ensign14]

Just discovered this thread (thanks Paul Hartshorne)...OT, but after a somewhat contentious Bulgarian Cup Final between CSKA and Levski, Hristo Stoichkov of CSKA went into the Levski dressing room to congratulate them and look at the Nulgarian Cup, which when he handled it somehow got very damaged, resulting in a mass brawl between the 2 sides and thenceforth expulsion from the League...

[SennasCat]

Originally posted by Huw Jenjin
Didn't one of the McLaren drivers drop the trophy into the crowd just to piss Ron Dennis off?

Yes, it was Prost. I think Monza 1989, things were going pear-shaped for him at McLaren as Senna had justifiably become the golden child. Ronzo went ballistic

[Leif Snellman]

In the rowing events of the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, Russian silver medal winner Victor Ivanov jumped up and down on the podium and dropped the medal in the water. The medal was never found but he was given a replacement by the IOC after the games.

In the rowing events of the 1988 Seoul Olympics Italian Gold medal vinner Davide Tizzano was thrown into the water. He came up again without his medal. A diver managed to find it after a 50 min search.

So Aussies, if you want a Olympic silver medal, it's just to jump into Lake Wendouree and start searching.

[AlesiUK]

Prost giving his trophy away at monza in 89 was possibly due to the fact he had already signed to drive for ferrari in 1990,the ever astute prost realised that getting the tifosi onside would be a good idea.

i had an unfortunate experience with a trophy a few years back,i had won a kart race and was presented with a fairly cheapish plastic/metal trophy.When i got it back to the truck and put it down on the table 2 plastic washers in the centre of the trophy shattered sending bits of plastic everwhere,including into someone's drink which was sitting on the table,this caused the trophy to go wonky and subsiquently fall to towards the floor,narrowly avioding impaling the dog!Guy who i traveled with won his race to,brought his trophy back and it broke to.cheap rubbish!

I also recall visiting a kart factory and finding a race winning trophy being used to hold a door open,and another used as a step.

I never know what to do with all mine(he boasted )had them on display in the house for a while,now they are all in boxes in a cupboard somewhere.

[ehagar]

Originally posted by Psychoman
That was Muhammad Ali's medal if memory serves right...

Myth has it that Muhammad threw his gold medal into the Ohio River.... he had in fact lost it or it was stolen. It is one of many Allegorical tales included in film on Ali.

There was the 'black power' display during the 1968 Olympics in Mexico though.

Kenny Roberts once gave back a trophy when he was a GP rider. He was mad that the prize money was so low and gave the trophy back, 'Since they needed the money so badly'

[jarama]

Not trophy smashing, but trophy rejecting:

Back in 1911, after the very first Monte-Carlo Rally, Capt.von Eismarck (correct spelling?), rejected his trophy for finishing sixth, because he thought he would have finished higher had not been held up by French custom officials...

[Doug Nye]

Originally posted by Don Capps
Moss did melt down most of his trophies to make a coffee table. And Niki Lauda used to give his trophies to the gent who owned a garage at the bottom of the hill near his house. In exchange he got car washes, servicing, and so forth. Typical Lauda. I also recall that the trophy Gilles "won" at Imola was never collected by him after the race. I also wonder about all those bottles of champagne that Reims used to give to the pole winners...

This puzzled me when I first read it. I asked about it the other day and I understand Stirl thought about doing it but in fact did NOT have his trophies melted down and cast into a table.

His wife Suzie thought that it might upset quite a lot of people, showing insufficient regard for the trophies as historic artefacts.

Absolutely stuffed for space, he ultimately sold the majority of them instead to an American geezer who painted a picture of a Moss museum display, dedicated in perpetuity. Anyway, predictably the whole shebang is now on the market, piecemeal... The Mosses can't justifiably be too upset about it. It was so predictable. But disappointing, nonetheless...

DCN

[Don Capps]

Originally posted by Doug Nye
This puzzled me when I first read it. I asked about it the other day and I understand Stirl thought about doing it but in fact did NOT have his trophies melted down and cast into a table.

His wife Suzie thought that it might upset quite a lot of people, showing insufficient regard for the trophies as historic artefacts.

Absolutely stuffed for space, he ultimately sold the majority of them instead to an American geezer who painted a picture of a Moss museum display, dedicated in perpetuity. Anyway, predictably the whole shebang is now on the market, piecemeal... The Mosses can't justifiably be too upset about it. It was so predictable. But disappointing, nonetheless...

DCN

Well, that does answer a question I always have had since despite several "references" to the alleged coffee table, there were still trophies in his home and office years later.... And the recent offerings of Moss "memorabilia" -- the very trophies which were supposed to be in that famed coffee table. I always had one small dose of skepticism about the whole idea of the trophies being made into an object d'arte: no one ever mentioned seeing it later on....

Well, Doug, I am glad to hear the real story, as disappointing as it may be.

[917]

AFAIK the man with the coffee table made from his trophies was Hans Stuck (senior).

Regards
Michael

[Mark Beckman]

Marlon Brando refused to recieve an Oscar as protest of Hollywoods treatment of the Red Indian.

[david_martin]

Originally posted by Paul Hartshorne
Hi. I've just watched the podium ceremony from the Imola F3000. The second-place driver (I won't spoil it by telling you who!) dropped his delicate-looking glass trophy, smashing it to shards. As if that wasn't enough, the winner also dropped HIS trophy when leaving the podium, shattering that one too

That was a rather farcical podium ceremony

From what I remember of that (it was the 2000 race), the trophies looked to be crystal platters or plates of some sort with very ornate and delicate edges. When the drivers picked them up by their edges to show them to the crowd, the edges they were holding broke off in their hands and the rest of the trophies crashed to the ground and shattered. By the end of the podium ceremony I think all three drivers (Minassian, Junqueira and Webber IIRC) had managed to break pieces off their trophies and both Minassian and Junqueira had managed to totally destroy theirs.

[mikedeering]

Mansell (who else?) cut his hands to shreds when he dropped the trophy he received for winning the 1989 Brazilian GP.

Didn't Prost give Ronzo a replica of the 89 Italian trophy he gave away when he tested for the team in 1996?

I recall in the mid 80s you got a little moped and 100 bottles of Moet for getting pole - which means in 1985-1986 Senna earned himself 1,500 bottles of Moet and 15 mopeds. What the hell did he do with them?

[Frank de Jong]

Totally OT, but Ajax's (for US residents: modestly succesful soccer club) first Super Cup (early 70's) was a terrible big tasteless thing. The ashtrays used to be emptied in this trophy - loved by the cleaners, because "it was sooo big..."