Pilot crashes, no one injured, in practice for air races

The pilot, James Nezgoda of Genoa, Nev., walked away from the crash with only a cut nose after his plane, a Yak 3M, crashed into the sage brush at the race course north of Reno.

Nezgoda was the only person on board. No one on the ground was hurt, a Reno police spokesman said.

The four-day event that begins Thursday drew a record crowd of 170,000 last year. Planes in some classes reach speeds in excess of 440 mph.

Last September, Richard Roberts, 63, Maybee, Mich., died when his single-engine Formula One plane crashed into the yard of a house about a mile northeast of Stead Airport. He was the 13th fatality in the history of the air races and the first since 1994, when two pilots died in crashes.

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