Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 30, 1995 TAG: 9505310033
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: CONCORD, N.C. LENGTH: Medium
spectacular success tempered by only a few moderate disappointments - life has treated Labonte like a clawless cat in a guard-dog shack. And he has succeeded in spite of it.
Just as Gordon did a year ago, Labonte won the first race of his career Sunday night in the glittering Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway, beating his brother, Terry, by more than six seconds.
The story of Labonte's rough road to victory is far more compelling than any of Gordon's 1995 heroics, and it would make a dramatic TV movie except that the life-and-death schtick doesn't fit Labonte's laconic demeanor. At all.
Talk to him about debilitating viruses, broken bones, high-speed crashes and potentially deadly illnesses like pneumonia and he shrugs such things off, or at least downplays them, even in the midst of battling them.
Labonte has been having the same kind of ordeal-filled successful year that Davey Allison had in 1992 and Jimmy Spencer had last year. But you would hardly know it.
For example, we didn't learn about the off-season thyroid condition that threatened Labonte's career until just a few weeks ago, when the June issue of Stock Car Racing magazine hit the stands.
And even then, the story might never have been written except that it was authored by Father Dale Grubba. When asked about his health by a priest, Labonte felt compelled to confess.
He started losing his strength in December, as he prepared to embark on the biggest opportunity of his career - replacing Dale Jarrett as the driver of Joe Gibbs' No.18 Chevrolet Monte Carlo. By the time he decided to see a doctor, his hands were trembling.
Gibbs sent him to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., where they prescribed chemotherapy in the form of pills.
``The dosage was just below that requiring isolation,'' he told Father Grubba. ``It was scary.''
The chemotherapy worked, but Labonte still needed help from David Green, who drives his Grand National car, during the all-important January tests at Daytona.
By February, Labonte was well again.
He was sixth fastest in time trials for the Daytona 500. And during the 500, he was lurking near the front in the late stages of the race when he crashed with only 14 laps to go.
But Labonte bounced back and finished second, behind Gordon, at Rockingham. He did it again at Atlanta.
Before the Darlington race, however, he got pneumonia. You wouldn't have known it by the way he acted, especially on the track. In the March 26 race, Labonte clawed his way to second on lap 200, avoiding all the mayhem in the year's biggest crash-fest.
Seventeen laps later, he, too, fell in battle. His was the worst crash of the day. He broke the tip off his shoulder bone. This just made him more sick, and he came down with double pneumonia.
So if you turn back the clock exactly two months, you will find Bobby Labonte as sick and lame as a man can be - bedridden, feverish and in mind-numbing pain.
And yet, he crawled out of bed and went to Bristol, Tenn., where Green relieved him again. He gutted it out on his own at North Wilkesboro, N.C., to finish 15th. At Martinsville, Va., he won the pole and finished 10th. At Talladega, Ala., he was fifth. At Sears Point in Sonoma, Calif., a solid 13th.
Eleven days ago, Labonte won the pole for The Winston Select. And he was in contention until snared in Dale Earnhardt's crash at the beginning of the final segment. On Sunday, he finally did it.
In his winner's interview, when he was asked about his year of turmoil, Labonte said, ``It hasn't seemed like ...'' He didn't finish the sentence, but you just knew he was trying to say that things like this don't happen to low-key guys like him.
And then he said: ``It has been just a really different, weird situation that I've been through. I can't explain all the mental thoughts I've gone through since January - getting hurt at Darlington, having to get out of the car at Bristol. I haven't really been hurt in a race car, and this year I got hurt. I was sick before that.''
But he's got an old football coach for a boss, and when he limped to the shop on a sore foot the day after his Winston Select crash, the reaction from Joe Gibbs was just the sort of thing that would inspire a fellow like Labonte.
``He said,'' recalled Labonte, `You're not wimping out on me, are you? You'd better not be.'''
by CNB