At the 1908 Summer Olympics, three motorboat racing events were contested. Various sources refer to the sport as "water motorsports", "motor boats", and "power boating". The 1900 and 1908 Summer Games were the only ones to feature motorised sports (motor racing was featured in 1900). The IOC has never decided which events were "Olympic" and which were not. All three events used the same distance: five laps around an 8-nautical-mile course for a total of . In each of the events, multiple boats started; however, only one finished due primarily to the gale that was blowing during the course of the competition. Events were held on 28 August and 29 August 1908. Medal summary The water motorsports event was quickly abolished, because after these games the IOC decided that the Olympics was not intended for motorized competition. Participating nations 17 boaters from 2 nations competed. Medal table Sources: Events Class A — Open class The open class was scheduled to take place on the first day of competition, 28 August. Two boats, Wolseley-Siddely and Dylan, began the race. Dylan abandoned the race partway through the first lap, with Wolseley-Siddely finishing first before the weather became too severe to continue the race. A second attempt to run the event took place the next day after the other two races had been completed. Wolseley-Siddely again started, this time against Camille (the only French boat to take part in competition). Wolseley-Siddely ran aground on a mud spit, leaving Camille to finish alone for the gold medal. Class B — Under 60 feet The B class was held on 28 August after the abortive first running of the open class. Again, only two boats appeared at the starting line: Quicksilver and Gyrinus. Quicksilver became threatened by water coming in over the sides, abandoning the race. Gyrinus, a small boat with an extra crewman to bail water, was able to finish to make its crew the first Olympic champions in motorsports. Gyrinus was the earliest round-bilge Semi-Planing Mono-Hull ('SPMH') designed by Sir John Isaac Thornycroft FRS, the great Victorian engineer, previously the designer and builder of the world's first torpedo boats and torpedo boat 'Destroyers'. Development of the technical features of Gyrinus (combining speed with good seaworthiness, as demonstrated in the 1908 Olympics) was described in 'Engineering', the Proceedings of the Society of Civil Engineers, on March 12, 1909. His son, Isaac Thomas Thornycroft, the