Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 5, 1995 TAG: 9502080018
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BOB ZELLER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
His skull was cracked, his brain badly battered. But Irvan pulled through. And now the only thing keeping him from returning to the track is double vision in his left eye caused by nerve damage.
In the furor over Irvan's near-fatal crash and his remarkable recovery, we have all but forgotten that another Winston Cup driver is fighting to save his career after suffering a head injury in a 1994 crash.
And the strange thing is, Chuck Bown walked away from his wreck.
Bown, 40, was just beginning to roll. One of the nicest drivers in the garage, Bown had come from the Grand National ranks, where he won the championship in 1990.
He finally landed a decent Winston Cup ride, Bobby Allison's Ford, in 1994. His team didn't have a regular sponsor, but had a decent car. And in April at Bristol, Bown won the pole. His first top-10 finish, a seventh at Martinsville, came a couple of weeks later.
But in June at Pocono, Bown spun in turn one early in the race. He was hit hard by Sterling Marlin and driven to the wall.
It took Bown five minutes to regain his senses. Once he did, he crawled out of Allison's Thunderbird and walked to the ambulance.
Bown went to Pocono's infield care center, then the medical helicopter began warming up.
``Any time you have someone unconscious for so long, there could be swelling of the brain,'' Bown's wife, Debbie, said just before the helicopter took him to an area hospital.
But it appeared to be just a precaution. When you see a driver walk away from a crash, you imagine the driver to be sore until Tuesday and return the next Friday as good as ever. End of story.
But when Bown tried to come back the next week, he couldn't drive. His right eye wouldn't let him.
``It's kind of an odd thing because from day one I've been able to see extremely good,'' he said. ``And my right eye, which is the problem eye, has been better than 20/20. And I don't get any double vision doing normal activities.
``The problem is the nerve ending that controls the right eye. Under racing conditions, with the G forces, the vibrations, the bumps and the speed, [the nerve ending] won't keep up. The right eye kind of sees stuff in a different location than the left eye.
``But it's a little bit worse than that, because it's not only double vision, but in the right eye the vision is kinda jumping around, too. It won't hold a true projection. So it kinda dances around.
``I was only unconscious for five minutes,'' he said. ``It was no big deal. But it just zapped one nerve, and that's all it takes.''
It was difficult to say he had a concussion.
``I really didn't have any head injury symptoms whatsoever. Never did,'' Bown said. ``No memory loss or dizziness. I never had any brain swelling or bleeding. Everything was fine except [the crash] knocked my right eye out. And I'm still waiting for that to go away.
``At Michigan, a week after the wreck, I thought I was going to be able to drive. I didn't realize I had the problem until I got up to speed in a race car. And I tried it again a few weeks later. It was the same deal, maybe a tiny bit better. But it was still a problem.''
In a cruel twist of fate, about the only other time Bown has a problem with the eye is when he plays golf, one of his favorite pastimes.
``Sometimes [while] watching a golf ball fly through the air as I'm following it in flight and it's traveling fast, I'll get a little bit of double vision,'' he said. ``But it's a smooth double vision. It doesn't jerk around.''
On Feb.1, Bown took Mike Chase's car on Richmond's 3/4-mile track at Richmond. It was Bown's first test in many months. The jumpy vision in his right eye had improved, but he still was seeing double.
And so he looks at 1995 with the same uncertainty as Irvan. And he's been busy lining up work. He'll work as a broadcaster on the Motor Racing Network radio broadcasts and TNN telecasts. And he's helping Chase learn the ropes in the No.32 Active Motorsports Chevrolet.
``It's not bad, but I'd ... rather be driving,'' he said. ``I expected [the eye] to heal long ago, but after seven months it's still not completely like it's supposed to be. So you just never know. No doctor can really say for sure. It's all a guess. They really can't see the problem. It doesn't show up on CAT scans or MRI. So it's just an educated guess is all it is.''
by CNB