Style of racing is rare in East
Sunday, Aug. 15, 2010
Off-road racing is largely a West Coast phenomenon, but it is creeping toward the East Coast, though fans are more protected, and it is held in more confined arenas to accommodate television coverage, former Charlotte Motor Speedway President Humpy Wheeler said Sunday.
The kind of off-road race like that in California - where eight spectators died Saturday after an off-road truck hurtled into a crowd on the 50-mile course of unmarked terrain - is virtually unknown in the east, he said.
"To make money, you've got to have a fence around the place, or the fans won't come. And if you want TV, you can't race on (a miles-long) course," Wheeler said.
He said there is some brand of off-road racing in West Virginia and Pennsylvania, but it's staged inside enclosed arenas with a fence between the spectators and the off-road cars and trucks.
"It's the same cars and the same thrills" as the kind of off-road races in the west, Wheeler said. Promoters, he said, have a hard time getting insurance if a track or course doesn't have the "strict separation" between fans and racers.
At least 27 people have died at off-track racing events in the United States in the past 20 years, including 10 spectators, according to Charlotte Observer records.
And at least 464 people have died at all kinds of racing events across the United States in the last 20 years, the records show. Of those deaths, at least 46 were spectators. Besides the eight who died Saturday, two others were killed on a course outside a track.
The type of off-road racing involved in the Mojave Dessert of California, where there are no barriers, and spectators cluster against the course, began in the early 20th century along the Baja Peninsula of Mexico. "It was a famous race," Wheeler said.
Yet in the early 1970s, off-road racing legend Mickey Thompson founded SCORE International to oversee off-road racing. He and his wife, Trudy, began organizing races in big arenas, reeling in the sport from a desolate terrain to cities like Los Angeles.
But after the Thompsons were murdered in 1988 by a former business partner, the sport had no leader, and it went back to the desert.
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