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Tuesday, February 21, 2006
There’s no gold for Flowers but big silver lining
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Cesana, Italy — The twins were back in the hotel with their grandmothers, sipping hot chocolate and watching mom ride in a sled on television.
Don’t all moms ride in a sled on television?
“The boys think all moms are on TV,” Johnny Flowers said Tuesday night, as he sat in the stands waiting for another Olympic moment by his wife, Vonetta. “She’s racing every other week, so they’re used to it by now.”
This is where we tell you that the TV star failed to win a medal Tuesday. Somehow, that became an afterthought.
Vonetta Flowers, the former college track star from Alabama-Birmingham who four years ago hit bobsled gold in Salt Lake City, did not climb the podium at these Winter Olympics. But it didn’t matter. She was floating above it.
“I feel like I won my gold medal earlier this year when my son had surgery and it was a success,” she said.
Flowers, serving as brakeman for driver Jean Prahm in the USA-2 sled, had a strong second day in the two-person competition but fell short. Flowers and Prahm started the day in ninth place after two heats, but they finished in sixth with a total time of 3:51.78, just .77 of a second out of a medal spot.
Now, this is where you might think Mommy Reality TV pulls the plug. Two Olympics, a gold medal, two 3-year-old sons, a husband — it’s all pretty satisfying stuff. But Flowers said Tuesday she isn’t done yet. She also is done taking a back seat.
“After the race, I went down to the crowd, and I said that was my last time pushing a sled,” she said. “Hopefully I’ll go back to Lake Placid and start driving. That’s my next goal. I took some trips down a couple of years ago, and it was an exciting feeling to be in front and in control. Hopefully, I’ll enjoy it and you’ll see me in four years as a driver.”
Hearing this, Prahm cracked, “She’s going to be my competition. But if she chooses to do that, I’ll hook her with a brakeman, maybe teach her some strategy.”
Jorden and Jaden, Flowers’ 3-year-old twins, already have more stamps on their passports than most people accumulate in a lifetime. That’s not about to change. And if Jorden’s health continues down its current path, he’ll be hearing words in several different languages between now and 2010 in Vancouver.
The medal Flowers had referred to was something more valuable than the element. In December, Jorden, who was born deaf, had surgery in Italy to insert an auditory brain stem implant. After a month to heal, doctors turned on the device in January, and for the first time in his three years on earth, Jorden began to hear.
“Think of him as a baby hearing for the first time,” Flowers said. “It’s like he’s four weeks old.” The family plans to stay in Italy for another few weeks so Jorden can have two follow-up appointments with doctors.
What Flowers didn’t know was that the Olympics would be a stopover for Jorden and Jaden. She had been all smiles since her husband surprised her by bringing the twins with him to Turin. The couple had decided that the expense of an extended stay in Italy would prevent the twins from watching their mother race a bobsled. But Vonetta didn’t know that one of her sponsors, Kleenex, agreed to underwrite the cost. The tearfest took place on the Today Show.
“This is what she wanted when she decided to come back — she wanted her family to be here,” Johnny Flowers said.
The boys were in the stands Monday but, “They were a little cold,” Johnny said. So they were left in warmth with their grandmothers Tuesday.
Prahm said, “There’s no question seeing the boys gave Vonetta a lift here.”
Given her speed and strength from track days, there’s little reason to doubt Flowers will make it to Vancouver. Then, everybody can get their passports stamped at the Canadian border.
“I had to get my mom a passport for the first time for this trip,” she said. “The boys have already been all over. Obviously, they won’t remember all of this. But we’ve taken tons of pictures.”
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The more NASCAR changes, the more it’s the same
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
You don’t find stock car racing fans at Augusta National. Or Wimbledon, or the Westminster Dog Show, or at the Figure Skating Championships. Stock car racing fans go to stock car races, where they cheer for a brand name automobile as much as they cheer for the man at the wheel. They hate as much as they love. If you love Tony Stewart, you hate the rest of them.
It started off less a sport than a brawl on wheels. Racers drove their cars to the track, backyard mechanics in Unionalls (a brand name), grease up to their elbows, and in one way, it hasn’t changed a lick. The first official NASCAR race was run on a dusty track outside Charlotte on June 19, 1949, and they didn’t play any favorites. The guy who won the race was disqualified when the official inspector declared he’d cheated. He was a hometowner, but the race went to some guy from Kansas. Jim Roper never won again in his career, which wasn’t much to speak of.
After the Daytona 500 the other day, Jimmie Johnson’s winning machine was stripped to the frame to make sure he hadn’t been cheating. (His crew chief had been suspended during the week.) The car came clean, and Johnson collected his $1,556,501 prize. The guy who finished last won more than Jim Roper got for winning.
NASCAR raced on in the dust and grime of podunk tracks for years, “folksy, simple and fairly obscure,” as Ed Hinton describes it in his book “Daytona.” Hardly folksy, for you had to have a tough hide to survive, and it wasn’t a place you took the family. Ed also takes the liberty of calling it “the most truly American sport of all,” though I’d say basketball might have a word about that.
But this is what I’m getting at: You turned on the television set Sunday afternoon and the screen was full of screaming machines going round an egg-shaped track at Daytona International Speedway. More people came to watch than saw the Super Bowl in Ford Field. Some lolled about in suites. Food was catered. Others watched from mansions on wheels in the infield. This is what has become of that red-neck scuffle at what was called Wilkinson Boulevard Speedway in 1949.
NASCAR didn’t come on like a tidal wave. It has sweated and cussed and boozed and cut every corner it could get away with to get here. Bill France and family created their own private dynasty. You played by their rules, or you didn’t get on their track. A couple of mutineers tried to break the monopoly and got their rears handed to them in a basket.
Fans had their folk heroes in those times, Fireball Roberts, David Pearson, Cale Yarborough, and the hero of them all, Richard Petty, “The King.” Petty set the one sports record that will never be broken. He won 200 races, but he had to run 13 years before he made two-thirds as much as Jimmie Johnson made for winning Daytona last Sunday. They had a celebration for Petty when he became the first million dollar man of stock cars.
They created another, but he had to die for it. Amazing, the icon Dale Earnhardt has become in death. Somone referred to him the other day as “beloved,” a bit of a stretch. I’d say. He was hard-nosed, crusty, growled and cussed, and drove to be feared. “The Intimidator,” they called him. He intimidated one time too many, and it cost him his life.
Now the stars of NASCAR come along well-manicured and tailored, make real sentences, fly their own jets, live in luxury and take refuge in motor homes. Some have movie star glows and fan clubs. You could take Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon, Kasey Kahne, Elliott Sadler — stock car racer or symphony conductor? – to the club and never be embarrassed.
It’s just amazing. Stock car racing started at a level lower than a West Texas rodeo. NASCAR even does it bass ackwards – runs its main event of the year right out of the box, and it booms, and goes on booming. They drive faster and take more chances, but they live longer. I’ll say it again – it’s amazing. Nothing has taken such a grip on sporting America as stock car racing. A few huzzahs to NASCAR, if you will!
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