Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 26, 1993 TAG: 9309260109
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: E3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BOB ZELLER
DATELINE: MARTINSVILLE LENGTH: Medium
"Does it play just FM, Brett?" a bystander asked.
"Nah, CD player, too," he replied.
To the squeamish, the most disconcerting thing about the WristJack are the four visible pins - two near the wrist and two near the elbow - that go directly through skin and muscle and into the bone.
"Yeah, they had to drill holes in the bone to get them in there," Bodine said nonchalantly.
But he feels no pain whatsoever. "I feel very, very comfortable," he said.
And even though Bodine will start today's Goody's 500 at Martinsville Speedway and the next three Winston Cup races with a hunk of metal the size of a telescopic gunsight attached to his right arm, NASCAR fans know there is nothing unusual about drivers competing while injured.
"Sometimes you have to go to work when you're not exactly feeling perfect," he said. "Well, I'm going to work.
"My plan is to start and go all day," Bodine said. "I may have to interrupt that plan or change it some time during the day. I don't have the range of motion with my wrist, so I have to chicken wing it a little bit, using a little more shoulder and a little more elbow."
The NASCAR custom is that if you can race at all, you race. And not only have the drivers developed the mindset to pull it off, they believe it helps them heal quickly.
"I feel like each and every week you put it off, then you're putting off reaching your peak, too," Bodine said.
Rick Mast had a hard crash at Talladega on July 25 and an even harder one during the next race two Sundays later at Watkins Glen. Both times he wrenched his neck, bruised various appendages and was sore throughout his body. But he refused to let either crash slow him for more than a day.
"After Watkins Glen, I got up early Monday, like at 6 o'clock, and I said, `I'm not going to let this stop me.' But by 10 a.m., it put me back on the couch. Everything was sore and my neck was just killing me. I couldn't move my head."
Mast's wife got him a prescription drug, but it made him disoriented and goofy the rest of the day. The next day, even though his neck still was stiff and throbbing, Mast was back at work around the house and yard, without the help of drugs.
"My neck is still stoved up," he said Saturday. "But you know you've got to race next weekend, so you've got to stay active. If you lie around, there ain't no way you're going to heal up faster. I'm of the opinion that if you can physically get up and move, you've got to do it, no matter how bad it hurts."
The late Davey Allison raced in pain for most of the 1992 season after suffering a variety of bumps and bruises, including a concussion in The Winston at Charlotte in May and a broken right wrist and forearm at Pocono in July. But he started every race and had a relief driver only for the first two races following the Pocono crash.
"I never ever remember him saying that anything hurt," said Brian VanDercook, publicist for the Texaco Havoline team. "But you could tell it did. When I walked next to him, I could hear him grunt with every step. It seemed like he did that for months."
Allison used to place his right hand flat on the top of the refrigerator in the lounge of the team's car hauler, pin it down with his other hand and then move his arm up, bending his wrist as far as he could, VanDercook said.
"His hand would start quivering and his face would get red and his eyes would bulge. But he did that all the time.
"One of the rehab trainers at HealthSouth in Birmingham [Ala.] said Davey worked harder at recovery than any other athlete that had been there. Davey was proud of that because he knew this trainer had worked with Bo Jackson."
The Wallace brothers have been among this year's walking wounded.
Rusty cracked his wrist in that finish-line tumble at Talladega in May. Although he never needed any relief help, Wallace said the injury interrupted his workout program and hurt his stamina in August at Bristol, where he dominated the race, only to lose the lead to Mark Martin with 12 laps to go.
Kenny Wallace cracked a piece of bone off his shoulder blade in a crash during the two-day Indianapolis test in August. He needed Dick Trickle as a relief driver in two races, but says "the shoulder is 100 percent now."
"The sport is so big and there is so much pressure that drivers fear if they get hurt and stop racing, somebody will take their ride," Kenny Wallace said.
"This racing stops for nobody. Alan Kulwicki owned his own race team, and one week after he died, his car was racing again."
Keywords:
AUTO RACING
by CNB