ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, February 18, 1996 TAG: 9602200005
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C-11 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: DAYTONA BEACH, FLA.
SOURCE: BOB ZELLER STAFF WRITER
THE WINSTON CUP champion is a movie buff who enjoys what celebrity status brings these days.
It was a typical spectacular November day in Maui and Jeff Gordon, the newly crowned Winston Cup champion, was once again risking his life on horsepower.
``We went horseback riding,'' he said at Daytona International Speedway this week while preparing for the Daytona 500. ``Five minutes into the thing, the horse bucked me off. I twisted my ankle. And I got right back on and rode him for the next three hours. I liked it. I was having fun. But I was hurting later,'' he said.
Then there was his surfing adventure.
``That was the day I tried to kill myself,'' he said. ``The waves are like 15 feet high. And I'm out there trying to Boogie board with half-professional surfers. And they were like, `You better get outta here before you kill yourself.'
``I got crushed by a couple of waves,'' he said. ``I got smart. I got out of there.''
Despite his high-risk endeavors on and off the track, Jeff Gordon, at 24, is finding that life these days is as good as it gets.
By his own measure of success, he has made it.
``I guess since I was probably about 15 years old, I thought that if I made it on David Letterman, that would be it,'' he said. ``And then it happened.''
Gordon appeared on the show in December during the Winston Cup banquet festivities in New York.
Since then, Gordon has been working on Letterman to come to a stock car race. Like many Indiana natives, Letterman is an Indianapolis 500 fan. He just purchased a share of Bobby Rahal's IndyCar team.
``He told me that NASCAR was changing,'' Gordon said, relaxing in his motor home between practices. ``He felt like it had come a long way and was going in a totally different direction than he ever saw. Maybe he thought it was more redneck stuff. I want to show people that it's not.
``He's never been to a NASCAR race. I told him, `We've got to get you to a race sometime.'''
Gordon, who lived in Indiana before moving south to go NASCAR racing, had that attitude about stock car racing when he was racing sprint and midget cars on dirt tracks in the Midwest.
``When you're around open wheel race cars, the feeling is, `Oh, those are like taxi cabs - those are big, heavy tanks,''' he said. ``Until I went to my first race, I didn't know. I could never watch a full NASCAR race on TV until I went to a race.
``But it's really neat to see a person's reaction when they go to a race for the first time and see the cars on the track. You get 'em there and say, `Check this out.' And they go, `Wow!'''
One who wouldn't need convincing is Emmitt Smith, the star running back for the Dallas Cowboys. Gordon and Smith met at ESPN's ESPY awards, where Gordon won the award for race driver of the year.
``It was cool, it was real cool,'' he said. ``I talked to Emmitt for a while. He wants to come to a race. He wants to get in a race car.
``I met a lot of athletes. I met [the rock group] Hootie and the Blowfish. I met the Japanese guy, [Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Hideo] Nomo. I told him we were coming to Japan. He had no idea what I was saying.''
Yes, life is good for Jeff Gordon. But in many ways, ``I'm just as normal as you.''
During the racing season, he tries to take Monday and Wednesday off. But those are semi-work days anyway, since he usually visits his shop and spends time returning calls and messages.
He'll work out on a Stairmaster exerciser if he can, but his favorite video game, Daytona USA, doesn't get much action. He's too busy.
Besides, Gordon and his wife, Brooke, have become movie junkies.
``I bet we see 100 movies a year,'' he said. ``We go right down the street, pay $10 for both of us, walk in and just sit there for two hours and get totally involved in something that doesn't have anything to do with racing. We go see the newest, hottest movie out.''
On the road, they sometimes have to sneak in and out of theaters. Once, at Watkins Glen, N.Y., he and Brooke were met by security guards after the show. There were about 300 people waiting for him outside.
``They took us down a side alley,'' he said.
But at his hometown theater in Lake Norman, N.C., it's no problem.
``We're regulars there. We're in there all the time. They know who I am, so it's no big deal. I'll sign a few autographs for the people working behind the popcorn stand. But it's usually not too crowded unless we go on the weekends, and we're hardly ever there on the weekends.''
One of his favorite recent movies is ``Crimson Tide'' with Denzel Washington.
At Christmas, one of his presents from Brooke was an IBM personal computer. Mark Martin sent him some E-mail recently. But it apparently went to the wrong Jeff Gordon - perhaps the same one who used to get his telephone calls by mistake when he was living in Harrisburg, N.C.
Gordon hasn't surfed the Internet yet, but ``I get on it and I get hooked and I can't get off. I've got my whole telephone system through it and I can talk right into the computer. I retrieve all my messages and faxes. I've got a printer and scanner. I'm prepared to do some serious business if I ever have time.''
Managing time is the greatest challenge in Gordon's life these days. He'll do many television commercials and dozens of personal appearances in 1996.
``The first year in Winston Cup, when Brooke and I met, if there was a weekend we weren't racing, we were gone somewhere all the time. I felt like I could get up and leave and do anything I wanted to that year. We laugh about it now. It was great, but the racing wasn't quite as good.
``This year, it was almost like our vacations were turned into work, because we were packing bags. All we ever do is pack and leave, pack and leave, pack and leave.''
And that's one of the reasons he and Brooke are not planning to start a family any time soon.
``We're not ready to have a baby,'' he said. ``We're a long ways from that. But when we do, we're definitely going to want to have two or three kids. But we're still young. We're still having fun with our lives and what we do.''
LENGTH: Long : 116 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Defending Winston Cup champion Jeff Gordon says he'sby CNBreached the pinnacle - appearing on David Letterman's show. Graphic:
Map by AP. KEYWORDS: AUTO RACING