When I was kid we used to do stupid things, like ride our bikes as fast as we can at this gigantic fence in behind our school and see how late you can hit your breaks without killing yourself in the tetanus infected wall of rusted wire. It was all fun and games until we switched bikes. One kid had a 3-speed, with hand breaks while the rest of us had foot breaks. We switched bikes and the kid who got the three speed forgot it was hand breaks while he was racing me to the fence, and he was moving quite fast because he was using the gears. Anyway, he hit the fence head on and it wasn't pretty, you must remember this before they made kids wear bike helmets.
(As an aside, I must say that all kids must wear bike helmets, they save lives and my son is living proof of that - if he was not wearing his helmet a few years ago he would most certainly be dead or at least brain-dead. If you've got kids make them wear their helmets!!!)
Getting back to the story, the kid who forgot to use the hand breaks was toast - broken arm, loose flaps of skin hanging down .. you get the image. Now keep that same image in your mind and picture yourself doing nearly the same thing, but instead you are racing towards a concrete wall in a car doing about 200 mph with no breaks. Scary. That is just what Jeff Gordon did at Pocono today, and thanks to some sharp driving and the safety devices in the car and on him he was able to walk away from that horrible wreck.
Now I'm not a Jeff Gordon fan, and probably never will be, and when Fox cut to the tail end of the wreck I was happy at his misfortune until I looked a little closer to just how bent the car was and realized he hit on the driver's side. To say I was worried is an understatment. I may not be a Jeff Gordon fan but I certainly don't want to see the man injured. My mind was racing, I remembered the hard and eerily similar hit that Bobby Allison took nearly 20 years ago in the tunnel turn at Pocono and what happened to him, and of course being a Dale Earnhardt fan (4ever3, get it?) I recalled the seemingly harmless turn 4 wreck at Daytona just over 5 years ago. Man was I glad to see Jeff crawl out of that car, I was pretty tense until that point.
Being a race fan it is o.k. to cheer a driver's misfortune as long as it pertains to the point standings, but if they are injured or even killed there is nothing to cheer about regardless if you like them or not. Any driver lost due to injury or death hurts the sport, and those people who cheer for it aren't true fans of the sport, they're just sick. I'm glad Jeff is ok and I hope he finishes his racing career on his own terms and I wish him the best of luck in doing so ... although if he doesn't win another championship it won't bother me a bit.
(As an aside, I must say that all kids must wear bike helmets, they save lives and my son is living proof of that - if he was not wearing his helmet a few years ago he would most certainly be dead or at least brain-dead. If you've got kids make them wear their helmets!!!)
Getting back to the story, the kid who forgot to use the hand breaks was toast - broken arm, loose flaps of skin hanging down .. you get the image. Now keep that same image in your mind and picture yourself doing nearly the same thing, but instead you are racing towards a concrete wall in a car doing about 200 mph with no breaks. Scary. That is just what Jeff Gordon did at Pocono today, and thanks to some sharp driving and the safety devices in the car and on him he was able to walk away from that horrible wreck.
Now I'm not a Jeff Gordon fan, and probably never will be, and when Fox cut to the tail end of the wreck I was happy at his misfortune until I looked a little closer to just how bent the car was and realized he hit on the driver's side. To say I was worried is an understatment. I may not be a Jeff Gordon fan but I certainly don't want to see the man injured. My mind was racing, I remembered the hard and eerily similar hit that Bobby Allison took nearly 20 years ago in the tunnel turn at Pocono and what happened to him, and of course being a Dale Earnhardt fan (4ever3, get it?) I recalled the seemingly harmless turn 4 wreck at Daytona just over 5 years ago. Man was I glad to see Jeff crawl out of that car, I was pretty tense until that point.
Being a race fan it is o.k. to cheer a driver's misfortune as long as it pertains to the point standings, but if they are injured or even killed there is nothing to cheer about regardless if you like them or not. Any driver lost due to injury or death hurts the sport, and those people who cheer for it aren't true fans of the sport, they're just sick. I'm glad Jeff is ok and I hope he finishes his racing career on his own terms and I wish him the best of luck in doing so ... although if he doesn't win another championship it won't bother me a bit.