Hot-rod racing, particularly drag racing, a rapid-acceleration contest on a quarter-mile strip, originated in the United States in the 1930s in the southern California desert.
In another tub I chatted with a couple on their way home from a Kinetic Sculpture Race (a contest of human-powered amphibious sculptures) on the Oregon coast.
But even celebrity on the epic scale accrued by Johnson is not enough to guarantee victory in a Tory leadership race – a contest in which Conservative MPs whittle the field down to a final duo from which the whole party chooses a victor.
"I don't I think I realized — I don't think any of us realized — just how challenging this would be," said Mr. Thompson, the leading Democratic contender in the New York City mayor's race, a contest that many have likened to mountain climbing because of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's resources.
Republican Rep. Darrell Issa is supporting his colleague Rep. Loretta Sanchez in this fall's Senate race, a contest that pits two Democrats against each other and gives GOP voters no obvious choice.
Special interests, like the casino, energy and hospital industries and others, have been heavily involved and sometimes find their ways around disclosure rules and exert their influence through independent expenditures, reducing race after race into a contest of slogans.
Big-name country acts like the Marshall Tucker Band entertain, the Maine Sea Goddess is crowned, and the more ambitious can compete in the "crate race" -- a contest to see who can run the farthest across a row of half-submerged lobster traps.
The race is a contest of contrasts.
Whatever happens on Tuesday, the presidential race remains a contest over character.
In a state where Democrats hold every statewide office, this is an unexpectedly tight race — and a contest few here in either party might have anticipated two years ago.
