Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 17, 1994 TAG: 9402170063
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BOB ZELLER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: DAYTONA BEACH, FLA. LENGTH: Medium
When Neil Bonnett returned to NASCAR Winston Cup racing last year after recovering from the severe concussion he suffered in 1990, he knew that one more hard blow to the head likely would kill him.
On Friday, he suffered that fatal head injury in a crash during practice at Daytona International Speedway.
Bonnett, 47, who had 18 Winston Cup victories, liked to joke that he was crazy. But his will to race again, no matter the risk, went to the core of his identity and probably made him the great athlete he was, a Salem, Va., psychologist believes.
Dr. John Heil, a sports psychologist at Lewis-Gale Clinic, interviewed Bonnett at length for his recently published book, "The Psychology of Sports Injuries." Heil said Bonnett is the most prominent athlete featured in his book.
"Adversity can take control of you," Heil said. "But if you can overcome it - if you can beat it - in some sense you're free. I think his comeback was a way of overcoming his adversity. He needed to not only overcome the injuries, but just to show that even when you have wrecks, he could get past that. It wasn't going to set him back. It wasn't going to stop him.
"With the intensity with which athletes go about their sports, they sometimes experience a feeling of emptiness when that's not there. It can be a kind of hunger for the experience itself.
"It seems like it's such a tightknit group in sports, so when you're in, you're in. And when you're out, you're not totally out, but you're not in, either. So when you walk away from it, you walk away from more than just a sport."
Heil said the inherent risks of auto racing also were a factor in Bonnett's will to return.
"In risk, there is certainly excitement. And in accurately assessing the risks, and planning a strategy for dealing with it, and then succeeding, there's a real sense of accomplishment," Heil said. "That's why some people play best in the last period of the Super Bowl.
"Neil's history was that he was able to overcome adversity - to do what other people couldn't do. His entire history said that's when he was at his best.
"I personally have never found a person who was more intelligent and more resourceful in dealing with injury than him," Heil said.
"He told me of a wreck where he was trapped in the car and had to be cut out from the roof. It was the time he fractured his sternum [at Charlotte in 1988] and he was sitting in the car and could sense the urgency of the emergency crew and the tension they were experiencing.
"And he was able to calm himself down and tell the crew, `Don't worry, I'm going to be OK. Take your time.' And that broke the tension.
"And the remarkable thing, when he got to the emergency room, they said his heart rate was normal," Heil said. "That's really incredible in that sort of condition, because usually the heart rate goes up and stays up. With pain, there is some fear. He was able to sort through that. He didn't get caught up in the fear that the pain might have created for someone else."
Heil said athletes are the "test pilots of rehab." They have the right stuff to recover quickly.
When Bonnett suffered a broken leg at Charlotte in 1987, it took him 12 weeks to recover well enough to get back in a race car. Doctors had told him it would take a year.
Heil said Bonnett told him he set up exercise equipment in the basement of his home in Hueytown, Ala. And as he worked out, he was surrounded by his trophies and racing memorabilia.
"Whenever he would stop in pain, he would just look around that basement. It was so motivating and inspiring to him that it just drew him back," Heil said.
"Perhaps it was no coincidence he was ready to go back to Daytona. From being injured, and looking at his love for racing, I think that was a way of personal triumph to him - to use that love of racing to overcome other adversity.
"I guess an interesting question is: Had his career run its natural course, might he have retired more comfortably by about the same age?"
"But you know, Edmund Hillary [the first man atop Mount Everest] once said if you have to ask why anyone would do it, you just don't understand. And the statistics on Himalayan climbing is that one out of 20 climbers die. So other sports carry higher risks," Heil said.
"I think that applies to Neil, too. If you have to ask him why he went back out there, you just don't understand."
Keywords:
AUTO RACING
by CNB