I don't recall Jim having a chute. My memory is fuzzy about stuff from 25 years ago, but it don't remember one. What I do remember is standing on a hill overlooking the course while doing a radio interview. I had just come in from my qualifying run and Jim was next up. The radio guy wanted me to describe what it was like to run the course, and I was doing that as Jim came down the front straight. If you remember, he sat kind of funny in a hydro, wedged in at an angle, about half laying down. He had a 3 blade cleaver and the tail was running high. He was going over a hundred when the back in kind of popped up from a wave and the nose clipped the top of another wave. He shot right out the front and his hydro just coasted straight ahead until it stopped. It was kind of remeniscent of Dale Earnhardt's crash. It didn't look that bad. Jim just flew out and hit the water. The rescue boat was right there. Immediately they all through their hands up and motioned for the ambulance crew to be ready. I cut off the interview and went down to the ramp to help keep the crowd away. According to what I heard about the cause of death was a broken neck. The way he shot out, his head hit the water first. That was the the race I would like to forget the most. Mary Kirts died of a heart attack the night before, then Jim the next day, and the day of the finals would have been blown out and cancelled if it weren't for the tunnels. I don't think any of us Americans raced in the finals. Even if the hydros could have run, we didn't feel like racing after all that.