Hundreds launch rubber ducks at Mills Park race in Carson CIty

With 400 racers on the course Saturday, you needed a program just to tell them apart ... well, actually, a program wouldn't have done any good ... they all looked alike, what with the basic yellow color, orange bills and painted-on eyes.

But when the little rubber duckies of a feather flocked together at the end of the Mills Park ditch race course, only one winner could fit through the finish gate for each heat and a quick inversion revealed its sponsor's identity.

After qualifying in a preliminary heat, Morgan Reed's little floater edged through the gate of the championship heat, winning Reed $1,000, dinner and accommodations for two at the Ormsby House.

The third annual Little Yellow Ducky Races were a fund-raiser for Carson Advocates for Cancer Care in support of its mission to pay for prescription drugs, treatments and pain relief for cancer victims in Carson City and Douglas, Lyon and Storey counties.

"Commodore" Ben McCulley served as announcer and overall duck drover for the races. He's also the guy who sequentially numbered 400 little rubber ducky bottoms a few years back to make possible the first Mills Park race for the Advocates. He has custody of the racers in the 364-day off season

"Just call me the ducky guy," McCulley said.

The traveling corporate race trophy - a silver plated ducky - went to Lumos Associates, one of the many companies that anteed up at least $50 a ducky to participate in the corporate race.

McCulley describes the traveling trophy that Lumos can display until next year's races as an "elegant, rotating dust collector."

First-place winners of all the heats won meals and rooms at the Ormsby house, while the Advocates provided a barbecue and music by the Back Forty Band to keep spectators entertained between heats.

None of the competitors took advantage of the barbecue, but they had probably done their carbohydrate loading well before the event.