Dean Chenoweth

Dean Alan Chenoweth (August 27, 1937 – July 31, 1982) was an American hydroplane racing pilot. Known for piloting the famous Miss Budweiser boat and the winner of four American Power Boat Association Gold Cups, he was killed at age 44 in a racing accident on the Columbia River.

Career Born in Xenia, Ohio, and a long-time resident of Tallahassee, Florida, Chenoweth began his career in motorboat racing at the age of 12. At 15, he won three national championships, in Class A and Class B hydroplanes and Class A stock boats. and won the National High Point Championships four times. Chenoweth also set a record of twenty heat race wins in the first five events of the 1980 season. Chenoweth survived a number of spectacular accidents, including a massive blowover on Lake Washington at Seattle during a speed record attempt in October 1979.

Chenoweth was inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 1991.

Death While piloting Miss Budweiser in 1982, Chenoweth was killed on the Columbia River in Washington on During Saturday morning qualifying for the next day's Columbia Cup at the Tri-Cities, the boat was traveling at about when it blew over and impacted inverted.

Legacy Chenoweth's death led Little to develop a closed cockpit for the next Miss Budweiser boat, and the enclosure became standard for unlimited racers. He is memorialized by a fountain in Lake Leon in Tallahassee's Tom Brown Park; he had been named the city's Man of the Year for 1981.