Ray St. Louis
5/18/00
BETWEEN THE LINES
In the movie Gladiator, there is a moment when Maximus, the lead character, brutally lops off the head of an
opponent while fighting in the arena, then asks the crowd "Isn't this what you came to see?"
When I saw the movie this past week, I left the theater feeling many things (a good movie will do that to you),
including a feeling of relief we do not live in such barbaric times. You can make a long list of criticisms of our
modern civilization, but al least we don't gather in huge stadiums to watch men die for our amusement.
The next day I caught the story of young auto racer Adam Petty, killed Friday at a racetrack in New Hampshire.
He crashed during a practice run for the Busch 200. He was 19 years old.
I have never been quite able to understand the appeal of motor sports. Machines moving at very high speeds
around a circle, with very little else happening, seems meager entertainment at best.
I'm not sure it even qualifies as sport. It's more like competitive technology--a contest to see who's got the faster
machine and the better mechanics.
Nor do drivers stand up as athletes. No need for years of training and sweating and developing skills, anyone
with money and the desire to play with fast, expensive toys can get into the racing business.
That's how celebrities like Paul Newman and former pro football coach Joe Gibbs did it. They had the money,
they decided they wanted to get involved with auto racing, so they bought their way in.
Adam Petty was born in the racing business. He came from a family of race car drivers. One can hardly imagine
a young man from the Petty family becoming anything but a race car driver. Adam Petty started racing early in
his teen years.
And now he's dead. Race car drivers will tell you that it can happen to any one of them on any given day.
Drivers die on racetracks all the time. Sometimes spectators die as well, when disintegrating race cars plow
through fences and into grandstands or bleachers.
And then sometimes it's the pit crew guys that die. Young Adam Petty found this out early in his career. In 1998
he ran over and killed his own crew boss, Chris Bradley, after Bradley crawled under the car to make an
adjustment during a pit stop.
People die left and right in the world of auto racing. So why doesn't anybody ever raise a fuss?
If this were any other sport, there would be hell to pay: investigations, recriminations, suspensions, finger
pointing. If this was bull fighting, or cock fighting, and it was animals dying instead of humans, national
organizations like the Humane Society and PETA would be lobbying to have the sport banned.
But because it's auto racing, and because human beings freely choose to compete irregardless of the risk,
people accept the carnage as part of the inherent danger of the sport.
Even as corrupt a sport as boxing generates more discussion of ethics whenever a boxer dies due to injuries
suffered in the ring. Investigations ensue. Sports columnists write scathing commentaries. Talk show hosts ask
the hard questions.
Not so with auto racing. Not a ripple. No articles, no columns (except this one), no moral outrage.
As technology has improved and race cars have gotten faster, safety measures have not kept up. Auto racing is
now more dangerous than ever. Yet no one, not even the drivers, ever examines the moral foundation of the
sport. Auto racing is the only sport that doesn't cancel or postpone the event when a participant dies.
By the way, the winner of the Busch 200 was Tim Fedewa. I found that information in a tiny article at the bottom
of the page in the sports section of my Sunday paper, right underneath a much larger article about Adam Petty.
There were a course record nine cautions during the race, one due to a spectacular fiery crash involving driver
Dick Trickle.
Nothing like a little wreckage to spice up the otherwise boring spectacle of cars going around in a circle.
Like Maximus, the head-disconnecting gladiator and amateur existentialist says, "Isn't this what you came to
see?" Makes you wonder how far we've really come since the days of the Roman Coliseum.