My father, Maratón del Río Balsas and his adventures in whitewater speedboat racing

This blog post is not about mountains or flying. It is about one of the wildest whitewater speedboat races on the planet during the 1970s. This competition became an international phenomenon where even Paul Newman, the Hollywood actor became involved. My father, Ricardo Liaño, participated in many editions, and he had absolutely no previous experience when he went into this adventure.

Sometimes, we look at a someone’s achievements and we wonder who influenced them at a young age. We wonder what events helped shape their goals and personality. In my case, my parents are my biggest influence. So today I want to talk about my father, and particularly about one of his least-known adventures. I hope that after reading his story you may have a better understanding of one of the many people that have supported me every step of the way to achieve what I have achieved and who shaped my life into what it is.

My father grew up in Mexico City, in a very poor family with 3 brothers and 3 sisters. They grew up with an amount of freedom that would be unthinkable today. They would hitchhike for a full day across three states to get to the beach in Acapulco, sleep on a hammock and hitchhike back the next day. As a teenager, he lost his father to lung cancer and from a very young age he had to work to support his family.

After graduating as an accountant and while holding a full time job, he and his brothers heard about river rafting from from a friend who was also an ex-Boy Scout. As they had no money to take the proper courses and buy rafts or kayaks, they went to truck tyre repair garages to buy discarded inner tubes. I remember my dad telling me that at first they considered looking for inner tubes from airplane tyres, not realizing that airplane tires are really tiny as compared with truck tyres! They thought that airplanes were big so their tyres must also be big.

My father and his siblings went around garages looking for punctured truck tyre inner-tubes and they also got hold of some second-hand paddles. Then off they went, with no experience, to Amacuzac river where their friend had told them to go. They would go in the water, sitting on the inflated inner tubes and try to avoid the worst of the rapids by paddling around. It was a thrilling experience that left them wanting more. For the roughest sections of the river, they would tie several inner tubes together for more stability. And they still couldn’t afford life jackets or even helmets. They would get the inflatable life jackets that airlines discarded. Their level of ingenuity and resourcefulness always amazes me.

After some time they graduated to second-hand inflatable kayaks that they patched up. They were dirt poor but living amazing experiences whith what they could put together. It was during this time that they first heard on the radio and read on newspapers about “Maratón Náutico del Río Balsas”.

Río Balsas is a river in Mexico that runs across Sierra Madre del Sur and flows into the Pacific Ocean. It stretches over 770km through 4 states (Puebla, Morelos, Guerrero and Michoacán). It’s also know by its regional names: Río Mezcala and Río Atoyac. In march of 1970, 13 speedboat teams started an 8 stage race along white water rapids and finishing with an open-water sea section. The race involved a descent through the famous Santa Helena rapids and the finish changed over the years from Lázaro Cárdenas, to Zihuatanejo and finally to Acapulco. The race became an international event during it’s second edition at the end of 1971 with 30 teams. There would eventually be participants from Canada, United States, Brazil, New Zealand and Australia, among others. A 1975 documentary would call this race “Mexican Madness”.

At the beginning of 1972, my father heard on the news that the second edition of Maratón del Río Balsas had just finished. That´s when the brothers decided they would be a part of the next race. They still had zero experience on whitewater speedboat racing and no money to buy any gear. On the summer of 1973, they heard on the radio that there would be an open meeting to brief interested teams two months before the third edition. They went to the meeting. The next day they paid their entry fee and they were officially registered. Those were very different times. When they signed up, they just received a 20 page rule book and they were told to show up in the town of Mezcala the day before the competition. That’s it. No proof of previous experience, or insurance, or anything else was required. More than a race, it was a very tough adventure.

The teams participating in Maratón del Río Balsas were divided into three categories: Class A.-for inflatable boats with outboard engines. Class B.- for rigid-hull boats with powerful outboard engines. Class C.- for “experimental” boats which included the fastest and newest jet engines. My father says that on that last category someone even tried racing with a hovercraft, but failed epically. Because it would be the cheapest option, they decided to race with an inflatable boat under Class A. At the time, they had full time jobs that were just enough to support a big family. And there was a minimum requirement of 3 participants per boat. Being 4 brothers, they were not about to leave someone behind. So they decided that all four of them would be participating on the same boat. For their team name, they chose “Los Pollos” (The Chics), which was my grandmother’s pet name for them.

With just two months to prepare for the race, they still had no boat and no engine. They went around knocking on doors, looking for sponsorship. Nothing. Just a few weeks before the start, they got in touch with a friend’s father who worked for PEMEX, the state owned oil company. Though him, they were able to get an old, discarded Zodiac inflatable raft that had been used and abused in oil rigs. It had multiple punctures and the wooden floorboards were detached from the rubber. To them it was a relief to finally have a boat. They spent 3 days patching up the raft and fixing the floor as best as they could. They got lucky as Yamaha was trying to get into the Mexican market with their marine engines and they were able to get a tiny 25 horsepower engine. As comparison, the bigger boats would have 800 hp engines. And they were also able to get four second-hand water skiing life jackets. As they couldn’t afford to get team uniforms, they got used matching, mechanic coveralls.

When I ask my father what their friends and family were saying to them while they were preparing, he tells me that all they got were words of encouragement and support. Perhaps he learned at the time how essential this is for one’s self confidence during tough projects and he has always been the most supportive with my own adventures.

On November 24th, 1973, the day before the start of the competition, my father and his brothers reached the riverside town of Mezcala, where the race would start. They decided to camp by the river. As all the teams were making their final preparations, they could see how out of place they were. Most teams had support crews that included mechanics who would deal with any repairs the boat and engine would need. They carried trailers with seemingly infinite spare parts. My father’s team could only rely on themselves and on what little they had with them. They inflated their raft with a foot pump and did a trial run on the river. Disaster! The whole floor became unglued from the rubber raft and they had to go back to repair it. They had also damaged the propeller on the rapids and they had to fix it urgently. For the rest of the competition, they would spend most of every night re-gluing the floorboards and repairing the engine, while the other teams slept.

The first stage of the race had the infamous Santa Helena rapids. They were so intense that many of the teams would just give up on the first day. It was a staggered start by categories. One boat at a time would make it’s way down the intense whitewater rapids. On every edition of Maratón del Río Balsas there would be severe accidents and occasionally deaths. But, considering that my father was used to go down similar rapids on inner tubes and inflatable kayaks, doing the descent on a boat with a motor felt like going on a cruise ship!

Every stage of the race would bring particular challenges, whether it was rapids, navigating in open sea, or finding their way through a labyrinth of islands and inlets on Infiernillo dam. When their engine broke down (it happened frequently) and they were in slow-moving water, they were attacked by swarms of mosquitos. They had no insect repellent.

With my uncles, my father would take turns to pilot the boat and the others would be lookouts and call out rocks and obstacles in the rapids. The fastest jet boats would cover each stage in about 45 minutes and they would get to rest for the remainder of the day. My father’s team would take about 4 hours for each stage if they didn’t have engine problems, which they usually did. Many times they spent up to 8 hours in the river, completely soaked, cold and with no food as the few snacks they had would get soggy and wet, and they would have to go through their emergency rations. When the engine broke down, they would have to paddle for hours to get out of the rapids and to try to fix it. If they couldn’t, they would just keep paddling for hours as there was no time limit for each stage.

My mom and aunts supporting on later editions of Maratón del Río Balsas

Every afternoon they would arrive at the end of the stage late, hungry and wet. They had to begin repairing the floor and engine in the dark, with just their scuba diving flashlights for illumination. Then they would sleep for a few hours in cots under palapas (traditional Mexican open shelters roofed with palm trees). A couple of years later, when the race became even more famous internationally, Paul Newman made his way south to participate. When he came, he had an RV driven all the way from the US, with support vehicles, trailers, mechanics and a whole crew. Even though he was on the same race as my father, their experiences couldn’t have been more different.

Continuous repairs gave them very little time to rest before the next stage

The final stage of Maratón del Río Balsas was an open sea challenge and my father remembers it as the toughest stage for the inflatable boats as they would be continuously knocked around and slamming into the boat. Their skin became severely chafed from rubbing against the raft for hours. But they knew they were just a few hours away from finishing the adventure. After seven stages, on December 1st 1973, they crossed the finish line marked by two large ships. The adventure was over, but not for long. As soon as they finished, they had already decided to come back the next year.

My father returned to Maratón del Río Balsas 4 more times. Because of his amazing tenacity, he was later sponsored by Old Spice and Beaufort boats. They finally got proper team uniforms! He later met my mother and she and her family became part of their support crew. Unfortunately, in the 1980s a large section of the river was turned into a new dam. The most interesting sections were lost forever and became dull boat rides. Maratón del Río Balsas lost its appeal and faded to obscurity.

For my father, it was never about winning. It was about the adventure, about the experience. It was about starting from nothing and getting somewhere. It was about fun and having an amazing time with his brothers. And that, he did. A lot.

This is only one of my father’s many adventures. But you can see how growing up with his influence made all the difference to me. I have nothing but gratitude for my amazing family.