More On The Postponement – And On Alex Zanardi
ESPN Radio carried a small item on one of
its Sunday SportCenter briefs that conveys better than anything why sports
should have continued where logistically possible on the recent weekend – the NY
Giants football team visited rescue workers at the site of the World Trade
Center wreckage to convey thanks for their efforts. The team members chatted
with rescue workers, and one criticized Kerry Collins because he lost in his
fantasy league after the Giants lost to the Broncos the previous Monday night.
This humorous anecdote conveys in its own
way how much of a necessary balm sports is to society in times troubled and
otherwise.
After authoring my column on NASCAR’s New
Hampshire postponement, I have received more feedback than with any column I’ve
done in a long time. The response is negative, and proceeds on two tracks – the
moral and the practical.
The moral argument basically goes along
this line: "How can they run these events when they’re still digging out
bodies in the wreckage?" The same way we all went back to work on Wednesday
after the attacks, the same way the President reportedly urged the NFL to carry
through with Week Two after the attack, the same way Senator John McCain urged
sports to continue in the wake of the tragedy – the same way the spirits of
racefans were recharged Saturday night at White
Mountain Motorsports Park, which held its regularly scheduled program to a
packed house despite chilly temperatures.
The point missed by the moral argument is
that getting on with our lives doesn’t mean we forget – writer Nick
Gillespie has pointed out how getting on with our lives focuses on the
future instead of the past: also, few remember what the World Trade Center
replaced when it was built – it means we don’t paralyze ourselves about it.
Getting on with our lives is necessary and sports are a needed balm in them.
Immobilizing ourselves in fear is part of the goals of radical
Islam and the terrorists it sent on their attack.
And by the way, I donated two huge bags of
clothes to the Salvation Army in their drive after the tragedy, and have also
donated to the Red Cross.
The second argument for postponing the New
Hampshire race involved logistics. Here there were certainly valid situations to
ponder. But again, such issues could have been solved by running the scheduled
races – albeit on Monday the 17th of September instead of outright cancellation
of Grand National North and the Modifieds and moving Winston Cup to November 23
– a tentative date given the self-evident absurdity of such a race date amid the
area’s unpredictable November weather. Issues of air travel certainly played a
role, though flights resumed on the Friday before the scheduled date amid
airport security
changes that Sam Dealey details may not be the right way to go. And given
that all the souvenir trailers arrived at the track on time, it isn’t all that
unreasonable to believe that race teams and drivers could similarly have
arrived, via overland methods drivers were already preparing for before the
postponement decision or by flights resumed as the weekend started, in time for
a Monday race program.
Contrary to the impression created by the
weekend’s cancellations and postponements, sports outside of the affected areas
(and NHIS qualifies as such) does not disrupt necessary activities; sports serve
as a needed balm, a part of getting on with our lives instead of cowering in
bunkers, figurative and/or otherwise.
One sports body that did run on the
weekend was CART at the Eurospeedway
in Lausitz, Germany. CART renamed the German 500 the American Memorial and
donated the purse to New York relief efforts. The track is a two-mile Pocono
clone with a three-mile infield road course.
The description of the track as a Pocono
clone is necessary because the crash that right now personifies the speedway is
eerily reminiscent of the June 1986 Pocono crash involving Morgan Shepherd,
Harry Gant, and Buddy Arrington.
For the first time this season, Alessandro
"Alex" Zanardi was leading, and late in the race. But after his final pit stop
he spun in the first turn groove and was nailed at full speed by Alex Tagliani,
a crash that cost Zanardi both his legs.
In a racing season that saw Dale
Earnhardt’s death, the death of a non-participant in a huge F1 crash involving
Jacques Villeneuve, and a huge crash where IRL driver Davey Hamilton was badly
injured at Texas, the loss of Alex Zanardi’s legs comes as yet another bad blow.
Zanardi will likely work to be able to
race again with artificial legs, but for now a spectacular career comes to a
bloody end. Four years of F1 mediocrity led to a 1995 sabbatical from racing,
but for 1996 he signed with Chip Ganassi’s CART team alongside Jimmy Vasser. The
choice was a puzzle to some observers, but Ganassi’s team had a secret weapon –
the combination of being the works team for Reynard chassis, Firestone tires,
and Honda engines. After Vasser won four events in the 1996 CART season’s
opening third, he took a back seat to the more flamboyant Zanardi, who won three
events and earned lasting fame for a nervy shot past Bryan Herta in Laguna
Seca’s corkscrew turn. From there Zanardi exploded to back to back CART titles,
and after winning in 1998 he felt confident about returning to F1 – a move that
blew up in his face; he was uncompetitive, got into the dirt a lot, and was axed
after 1999, while his former team, now driven by Juan Pablo Montoya, picked up
where it left off and won Montoya a CART title of his own – adding insult to
injury in terms of Zanardi’s F1 forays, Montoya bagged his first career F1
victory on that same weekend.
Zanardi took another sabbatical, in 2000,
and then signed with his former engineer Mo Nunn for the 2001 CART season. But
again he was uncompetitive, and his heart didn’t seem in racing anymore, though
he certainly was not giving up.
Now has come this accident. Should Zanardi
ever race again with artificial legs, he’ll no doubt want to prove that his
crash wasn’t enough to stop him.