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Status quo No outcry over deaths in the latest 'hot' sportPosted: Thursday February 14, 2002 1:56 PM
I stumbled across the fact this week that four drivers died last year at the Daytona International Speedway. The Daytona 500 is Sunday and I was thinking about doing the obligatory story about the crash that claimed the life of Dale Earnhardt on the last turn of the last lap of last year's race. I wanted a statistic, how many people had died at the track since its inception in 1959, so I typed "Daytona speedway deaths" into the little box for the search engine on my computer. That was when I learned that after Earnhardt died in February, a motorcycle rider named Dick Piz died in March and another motorcycle rider, Stuart Stratton, died in October and on Dec. 30, a 17-year-old go-kart driver from Coventry, Ohio, named Michael Davis Jr. crashed and died. The four deaths, the article noted, were a Daytona record, breaking the previous mark of three in the track's first year. I don't know about you, but to me, four deaths in a year at one playground for sport and competition and entertainment are unacceptable. If this were any other venue in any other sport -- four deaths at the Rose Bowl in a year while playing football, four deaths on the hockey ice of Madison Square Garden, four deaths in the boxing rings of Las Vegas -- there would be an outcry everywhere, congressional committees formed in a moment. Ah, but this is racing, our newest hottest sport. The sun shines. Daytona beckons. Nobody says a word. Nothing substantial ever changes. Buckle up, you Christians, go get 'em. Just watch out for those lions. Leigh Montville's commentaries appear regularly on CNN/Sports Illustrated. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.
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