Guest Column By Cathy Elliott
It seems a dichotomy of sorts that one of the professional sporting events most closely associated with the Fourth of July — Independence Day — is the Coke Zero 400 Powered by Coca Cola NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Daytona International Speedway. On the day set aside to celebrate independence, the sport of NASCAR seems to celebrate anything but.
Or does it?
It has been a hot summer so far, and I’m not talking about the thermometer. Between the Stanley Cup and the World Cup, temperatures and passions have run high.
Being a Southerner, I’m still not completely sure where all these hockey and soccer fans suddenly came from, but being an American, my only comment on the subject is “go, team!”
One sport I do follow pretty closely is tennis. What a thrill it was to watch what will surely go down in history as the greatest match ever played, when American John Isner beat France’s Nicholas Mahut in a contest at Wimbledon lasting 11 hours, 5 minutes with a final score of 6-4, 3-6, 6-7 (9-7), 7-6 (7-3), 70-68, played on June 22. And June 23. And June 24.
Tennis. Now, that’s a solitary sport consisting of one player and one racquet on either side of one net, with one ball between the two of them. That’s it.
If a guy misses a shot or seems a half step slower than his opponent, there is no team poised to spring into action and correct the problem. The coach can’t even sit on the sidelines. The player’s only solution is to play better, to run faster. Literally, it is an “every man for himself” kind of game.
I have never watched a soccer match in my life, and most folks had probably never heard of John Isner before June 22. And June 23. And June 24.
Still, it’s safe to say that most of us felt some sense of outrage at the poor officiating we have seen in the World Cup, then that swell of patriotism when the U.S. team came back and won anyway, and when a tennis match that broke every imaginable record was won by a guy from Greensboro, N.C.
And just to add a little more icing to an already tasty cake, Lord Stanley’s Cup is currently living in Chicago rather than somewhere in Canada.
Still, when you think of all-American sports, it’s hard to find a better example than NASCAR.
Former President of the United States Lyndon Johnson once described the state of the union as “free and restless, growing and full of hope.”
When you think about it, it isn’t too much of a stretch to apply these same phrases to race teams. There is a certain degree of restlessness inherent in any NASCAR garage, where the search for that extra thousandth of a second, that additional quarter inch of distance, never ceases. The sport is constantly growing, geographically and technologically, as well as in popularity.
That perpetual restlessness and growth, combined with the freedom to experiment (within certain limits, of course!) and the final ingredient — hope — paints a pretty representative picture of a NASCAR team.
Like the place of its birth, NASCAR is an upstart, a rough-and-tumble contest made up of equal parts determination, talent and pure grit. Mechanics, sponsors, crew members, equipment and a lone driver are melded together into a large group that somehow functions efficiently, and sometimes even brilliantly, as a single unit.
Oh, they’ll fight and bicker and publicly snipe at one another, but let Jeff Gordon need help — real help — and all those guys he basically ran over at Infineon Raceway on June 20 will queue up right along with everybody else to offer their assistance. NASCAR’s individual states may have their little border skirmishes from time to time, but don’t even think for a second they aren’t united, because they are.
Where this is unity, there is always victory, and in the sports arena, stock car racing continues to be a proven winner, in every category you can think of.
In NASCAR’s case, freedom not only rings — it roars.
The opinions expressed in this articles are solely those of the author and not this website.
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