A speedboat went airborne at over 200 mph while attempting a top speed run at the 2025 Desert Storm Shootout in Lake Havasu City, Arizona on Saturday. Miraculously, both drivers of the Freedom One skater racing boat survived the harrowing crash with nothing more than a few broken bones and minor injuries.
Around noon, the Freedom One Racing Team based out of Kansas City, Missouri lined up for their turn to attempt to break the speed record in the 3/4-mile top speed run. Toward the end of the race when the boat was traveling between an indicated 200 and 210 miles per hour, the team believes the bow of the boat caught a significant wind gust which caused the boat to fly into the air, flip end-over-end, then rotate 360-degrees before slamming into the water backwards and upside down.
Freedom One Racing boat technician Ryan Olah told Arizona’s Family News that one driver suffered a broken collarbone and banged-up ribs, and the other suffered a “semi-fractured” knee. Both occupants successfully escaped from the upside-down wreckage.
Crashing at 200 mph in a 10,000 horsepower custom speedboat
Ray Lee, publisher and owner of Speedboat Magazine told Fox 10 that the accident occurred on the team’s first pass of the day. Lee said the boat is a 388 skater that’s estimated to produce about 10,000 horsepower, and the team’s aim was to break the 206-mph top speed record at the Desert Storm Shootout. Before the boat became airborne, official race radar clocked the boat traveling at 200.1 mph, though the on-board speedometer displayed between 200 and 210 mph around the time the boat left the surface of the lake. In an interview with Fox 10, fellow Desert Storm Shootout competitor Jeff Clark said,
“At that speed, it doesn’t take much, you know, those tunnel holes are built to pack air so the boat rides on top of the water. You know it’s like on a rail and if you pack up too much and that nose gets too high it’ll just – at that speed – it’ll take you airborne.”
Lake Havasu has seen 11 fatal racing crashes since 1963
Lake Havasu City is located about 150 miles south of Las Vegas on the California/ Arizona border, and Lake Havasu itself is a man-made lake that is a hotbed for high-performance water sports like boat races and jet ski races. Since the city’s founding in 1963, 11 fatal racing accidents have occurred on the lake, including a similar crash during the 2018 Desert Storm Poker Run. Two local men Brad Kloepfer and Paul Selberg were killed after their boat flipped at speeds in excess of 150 mph.
Arizona Family’s weather team says wind gusts in Lake Havasu City were reported to be around 30 mph at the time of the Freedom One Racing Team’s incident. Their race vessel looks to have remained remarkably in-tact following the spectacular crash, and Olah said that both victims were in good spirits yesterday, even joking around despite being banged up and sore. The team still won the top speed event despite the accident, though they weren’t officially clocked at speeds high enough to break the 206 mph record.
