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IndyCar walks away from the Pocono Raceway

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5 years ago

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From the air, the second turn at Pocono Raceway doesn’t seem all that imposing. The corner that left Canadian IndyCar driver Robert Wickens paralyzed – after a horrific accident last year ended his record-setting rookie season – is a broad, sweeping curve with a straightaway on either end.

But at track level on race day, it’s a much different story.

“It’s what’s called a pucker corner,” said Nick Igdalsky, the chief executive officer of Pocono Raceway. “Your whole body puckers up – and you especially know which part in particular.”

At full speed, the banked left turn can give even the most seasoned drivers pause, particularly in a cluster of cars all vying for position, in a swarm of competing interests.

“It’s a corner that gets you,” Igdalsky said. “You’re going in there at over 200 miles an hour. You turn the wheel at any point at 200 miles an hour and it’s going to be a crazy corner.”

Wickens’s life was forever altered there in August, 2018, when he tested the limits of Turn 2 early. On the seventh lap of his debut race at Pocono, he made a move to pass rival Ryan Hunter-Reay. Some saw it as a bold manoeuvre for such an early stage of the race. But for Wickens, it was in-character. He was aggressive and shrewd, and was winning races because of it.

But their tires touched for a split second and Wickens’s car was flung violently into the catchfence, shredding the vehicle to pieces and leaving the sport’s fastest-rising star with a catastrophic spinal cord injury, neck fracture and a host of other serious injuries.

Since then, one question has hung like a pall over Pocono: Is the track dangerous, or just cursed?

Less than a year and a half after the Wickens tragedy, IndyCar has walked away from the storied raceway, seemingly unwilling to wait around to find out the answer.

With three high-profile accidents in the past four years, beginning with the 2015 death of driver Justin Wilson, followed by Wickens’s paralysis and a crash this year on Turn 2 that sent another driver to hospital, Pocono leaves behind a troubled legacy.

Some drivers have called the track unsafe. Others have rushed to Pocono’s defence.

Watching this year’s race on television, Wickens lashed out angrily on social media after witnessing another pileup in Turn 2, which conjured memories of his own accident, and sent driver Felix Rosenqvist to hospital.

“How many times do we have to go through the same situation before we can all accept that an IndyCar should not race at Pocono,” he said. “It’s just a toxic relationship and maybe it’s time to consider a divorce.”

“I think the answer is clear that we should not be here,” driver Sage Karam added. “I think it’s just not meant for IndyCars.”

In 2015, Karam’s car hit the wall at Pocono, scattering parts of the vehicle all over the track. One piece of debris ricocheted off the asphalt at high speed and struck Wilson in the helmet, killing the 37-year-old British driver.

“In my opinion, that question was answered a while ago,” Karam said.

Others in the sport struck back, including retired former champion Mario Andretti, who said Pocono was “not for sissies.”

The bitterness and finger-pointing has exposed a deep divide within the sport, wounds that are not likely to heal anytime soon.

But the man now at the centre of the storm insists the track has been unfairly impugned by the accidents. He insists it is neither cursed nor excessively unsafe, despite the series of events that have unfolded there.

“Yes, it’s a racetrack; yes, it’s dangerous,” Igdalsky told The Globe. “Dangerous more than others? I don’t think so.”

Officially, IndyCar said it left Pocono purely for business reasons. There were greener pastures elsewhere, at a newly renovated track in Virginia. Meanwhile, negotiations with the Eastern Pennsylvania raceway had stalled.

“I don’t really think it was anything in particular,” IndyCar president Jay Frye said in an interview. “It was really just a timing thing.”

But the details are murky. Asked if the issue of safety entered into the negotiations between Pocono and IndyCar, Igdalsky replied: “I’m going to no-comment on that one.”

But as Wickens struggles to teach himself to walk again – hoping to one day compete again, and fighting to not be left behind by the sport – the legacy of his accident is a complicated one.

A year later, the sport is no closer to ensuring any driver would walk away from the same crash if it happened again.

After Wilson’s death, IndyCar mandated a clear ‘aeroscreen’ that will shield the open-air cockpit of the cars starting next season. IndyCar also hopes the screen will prevent other accidents, such as the 2011 death of driver Dan Wheldon, who was killed when his head struck a pole after his car was launched into the catchfence.

However, dealing with the problem of catchfences themselves has been painstakingly slow.

Originally designed to keep cars from flying off the track into the fans, the barriers of steel mesh and poles are designed to absorb energy on impact. But their design also tends to shred cars to pieces – like a cheese grater – sending debris into the track and spinning or snagging the car violently on the fence.

Wickens’s accident was just that. When his car spun like a top into the catchfence, it snagged on the mesh and shattered to pieces, tearing an 80-foot hole in the structure.

While outer sections of the cars are designed to break apart on impact, as a way of absorbing energy to protect the driver’s cockpit, the sudden jarring of the crash is believed to be what left Wickens near death and unable to walk. It is the first time in IndyCar history that a vehicle’s black box data recorder was destroyed on impact, giving an idea of the force of the crash.

But few, if any, safety changes have come as a result of Wickens’s accident – in part because the sport can’t figure out or agree upon what it needs to do with the crash fence.

Proponents of change have argued for a clear Plexiglas structure, not unlike hockey boards, but bigger, that wouldn’t ensnare the cars. However, purists doubt such a structure would be able to sustain a collision and argue the cost is simply too high.

Others put their hopes in future technology, such as the use of magnetic forces that would invisibly keep the cars from flying into the grandstand without the need for a sudden impact. But those are distant solutions that require much technological advancement and money before they become a reality.

“Quite honestly, have you heard of anything other than a fencing system?” Igdalsky said, when asked about safety improvements. “We haven’t. As soon somebody invents it, I’d be happy to take a look at it.”

The only tangible change that’s come from Wickens’s accident, IndyCar said, is the redesign of a small fire extinguisher carried on each car. Previously, the ‘fire bottle,’ as it’s known, had no set place where it had to be mounted in the car, and crash inspectors noticed it came loose during Wickens’s accident. Now, the bottle is mounted in a standard spot near the driver’s feet, so that it doesn’t turn into a projectile.

But it’s not clear if the bottle had any role in Wickens’s injuries, compared with the impact with the fence itself.

With few safety solutions to offer up, IndyCar appears ready to simply move on from Pocono, putting the tragedies and controversy in the rear-view mirror.

For Wickens, the catchfence is both a problem and his saviour.

On one hand, it prevented his car from hurtling out of the track into a grove of trees beyond Turn 2. On the other, it changed his life forever.

“It’s not hidden that Pocono is one of the older tracks in terms of safety and you could see it on the track walks that the fences weren’t quite – I guess you could say, the upkeep wasn’t there,” he told The Globe and Mail this year. “But it’s not that you need a whole lot of upkeep on a fence. It’s either working or it’s not. And the thing is, the fence did everything it needed to do. It kept me in the track.”

“I actually asked that question: What would have happened if I just sailed through it. Because I actually almost went through the fence. There were trees [on the other side]. So what would you rather do? I don’t know.”

Early on, Wickens’s crash prompted renewed talk of safety improvements, but that talk has largely died down.

In many ways, the sport has returned to business as usual: the long-held belief that racing is just inherently dangerous, potentially deadly, and that everyone involved – including drivers and fans – accepts it. Like other racing circuits, from NASCAR to Formula 1, IndyCar knows that risk is part of the attraction. When it comes to attendance and television rights, it’s partly what pays the bills.

“It’s a dangerous sport, yes,” Frye said. “We, as a league and series, do everything we can to mitigate it. And every time you have something happen, you learn something from it and then it’s our job to react to it.”

For Igdalsky, there is a cruel irony to Turn 2 that he argues has been overlooked.

Pocono Raceway, which is more of a triangle with rounded corners than an oval, was built as an homage to other famous tracks in the late-1960s. Turn 2 is a carbon copy of a turn at Indianapolis Speedway, site of the Indianapolis 500.

“The measurements and the physics of the corner are nearly identical,” Igdalsky said. “But people say, ‘Turn 2 is terribly dangerous.’ ”

However, since the track played host to its first race in 1971, the top-end speed of IndyCars has increased by nearly 85 kilometres an hour. Although the physics of the track remain unchanged, the same can’t be said for the cars.

Pocono will continue to play host to NASCAR races, in which the cars are slower and the drivers are less exposed, but for now, no one knows if IndyCar will ever be back. The legacy of Wickens’s accident may, in fact, be the end of an era in the sport.

For his part, Wickens has not moved on from racing. In the fall, he married his fiancée, Karli, leaning on a walker while he recited his vows. The new couple danced, with Karli bracing him as they swayed to the music and Wickens shuffled from side to side. It was a promise he fulfilled to her after the accident, that he would dance at their wedding. At the time of the crash, even some of his doctors thought he would never get there.

Returning to racing is another goal he refuses to surrender.

Last week, Wickens practised learning to walk with a cane, putting one tentative foot in front of the other during his latest round of intense physiotherapy. He’s still a long way off from walking normally, but it’s a start.

“I tried a couple months ago, and I couldn’t even take two steps,” he said on social media. “Today I was walking around at a snail’s pace. It’s days like today that make me want to work even harder.”

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Washington Capitals 3-2 win ends Dallas Stars’ winning streak

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17 hours ago

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October 18, 2024

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Tom Wilson, Dylan Strome and Taylor Raddysh scored to help the Washington Capitals end the Dallas Stars’ season-opening winning streak at four with a 3-2 victory Thursday night.

Wilson’s goal was his third in three games, Strome his second of the season and Raddysh his first since joining the team in free agency last summer. Charlie Lindgren made 22 saves as the Capitals wrapped up this early homestand with back-to-back wins.

The Stars fell from the ranks of the league’s unbeaten teams despite a short-handed goal by Colin Blackwell and one at even strength from Jason Robertson. Rookie Oskar Bäck set up Blackwell for his first NHL point.

Casey DeSmith was screened on two of the three goals he allowed on 26 shots.

LIGHTNING 4, GOLDEN KNIGHTS 3

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — Nikita Kucherov scored the winning goal with less than a minute to play just 1:27 after Brandon Hagel had tied it and Tampa Bay rallied to beat Vegas.

Kucherov’s second goal of the game with 55 seconds left was his sixth of the season.

Janis Moser had a goal and two assists for the Lightning, who remain unbeaten. Andrei Vasilevskiy made 22 saves.

Brayden McNabb, Pavel Dorofeyev and Ivan Barbashev had goals for Vegas. Adin Hill turned aside 21 shots.

Jack Eichel, with two assists on Thursday, now has 10 points this season in five games and reached reached double-digit points faster than any other player in Vegas history. He is the 10th U.S.-born player to accomplish the feat.

After Barbashev put Vegas up 3-2 early in the second, Hagel pulled Tampa Bay even at 3 with 2:22 remaining in the third.

BLUE JACKETS 6, SABRES 4

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Kirill Marchenko and Mathieu Olivier each had a goal and an assist and Daniil Tarasov made 21 saves to help Columbus to a win over Buffalo.

Yegor Chinakhov, Adam Fantilli, Zachary Aston-Reese and Damon Severson also scored for Columbus, and Zach Werenski added two assists.

Ryan McLeod, Owen Power and JJ Peterka scored for Buffalo, and Jiri Kulich added his first NHL goal. Devon Lev stopped 19 shots for the Sabres (1-5-1), who have lost two straight road games and five of their first six overall.

CANUCKS 3, FLORIDA 2, OT

SUNRISE, Fla. (AP) — J.T. Miller scored 2:09 into overtime and Vancouver got their first win of the season, beating Florida.

Teddy Blueger and Quinn Hughes had goals for Vancouver, with Kevin Lankinen stopping 26 shots.

Anton Lundell got his fourth goal in the last three games for Florida and Jesper Boqvist also scored for the Panthers, who got 30 saves from Sergei Bobrovsky.

Florida remained without forwards Aleksander Barkov (lower body) and Matthew Tkachuk (illness).

DEVILS 3, SENATORS 1

OTTAWA, Ontario (AP) — Jacob Markstrom stopped 30 shots and lost his shutout bid in the final minutes as New Jersey beat Ottawa.

Erik Haula, Nathan Bastian and Paul Cotter scored for the Devils, who won for the third time in four games and improved to 5-2-0.

The Senators, who were coming off an 8-7 overtime victory against Los Angeles on Monday, struggled to beat Markstrom.

Brady Tkachuk was the only scorer for the Senators, beating Markstrom, with a power-play goal with 65 seconds remaining in the third period.

Anton Forsberg, making his second straight start and hoping to rebound after getting pulled Monday, made 32 saves in the loss.

Haula opened the scoring early in the second period and Bastian added a short-handed goal, giving New Jersey a 2-0 lead after 40 minutes. Cotter scored midway through the third.

RANGERS 5, RED WING 2

DETROIT (AP) — Artemi Panarin had his eighth career hat trick and New York rolled to a victory over Detroit.

Panarin became the first Rangers player to have multiple points in the first four games of a season. He scored twice on the power play. Vincent Trocheck also had a power- play goal and assisted on all of Panarin’s goals.

Jonathan Quick made 29 saves in his season debut. Victor Mancini also scored.

The Rangers have won the last five meetings, including twice this week. New York had a 4-1 home victory over Detroit on Monday night.

Moritz Seider and J.T. Compher scored for Detroit. Red Wings goalie Cam Talbot was pulled in the second period after allowing five goals.

KINGS 4, CANADIENS 1

MONTREAL (AP) — David Rittich made 26 saves a night after being benched in the second period in Toronto, helping road-weary Los Angeles snap a three-game losing streak with a victory over Montreal.

Los Angeles improved to 2-1-2 on a season-opening, seven-game trip necessitated by arena renovations.

Rittich rebounded after allowing four goals on 14 shots in a 6-2 loss to the Maple Leafs. Alex Laferriere, Mikey Anderson, Andreas Englund and Adrian Kempe scored.

Justin Barron scored for Montreal (2-3-0). Sam Montembeault stopped 28 shots. He made a save on Kevin Fiala on a penalty shot.

BLUES 1, ISLANDERS 0, OT

ST. LOUIS (AP) — Joel Hofer made 34 saves and assisted on Jake Neighbours’ goal at 2:04 of overtime in St. Louis victory over New York.

Hofer had his second career shutout in his and the team’s second overtime victory of the season.

Philip Broberg carried the puck into the New York zone and made a centering pass to Neighbours for the winner.

Islanders goalie Ilya Sorkin made 29 saves.

Blues defenseman Nick Leddy sat out because of a lower-body injury, the first game he has missed this season. Leddy played in all 82 games last season.

OILERS 4, PREDATORS 2

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Brett Kulak scored twice and Connor McDavid added his first goal of the season to lead Edmonton to a victory over reeling Nashville.

Jeff Skinner also scored and Calvin Pickard made 25 saves for the defending Western Conference champion Oilers, who have won consecutive games after beginning the season with a three-game skid.

Filip Forsberg and Jonathan Marchessault scored and Juuse Saros made 32 saves for Nashville (0-4).

Forsberg’s goal midway through the first period gave Nashville its first lead of the season. That lasted less than six minutes before Kulak tied it.

Kulak sealed it with an empty-netter in the final minute for the defenseman’s first career two-goal game.

BLACKHAWKS 4, SHARKS 2

CHICAGO (AP) — Tyler Bertuzzi and Nick Foligno each scored a power-play goal, and Chicago beat San Jose.

Taylor Hall and Jason Dickinson also scored for Chicago. Connor Bedard and Teuvo Teravainen each had two assists.

Hall, who missed most of last season because of right knee surgery, put the Blackhawks in front 4:20 into the first period. It was Hall’s first goal since Nov. 5 and No. 267 for his career.

Tyler Toffoli and Fabian Zetterlund scored for San Jose, which trailed 3-0 early in the second. William Eklund and Mikael Granlund had two assists each.

The Sharks dropped to 0-2-2 under Ryan Warsofsky, who was promoted to head coach in June.

Petr Mrazek had 20 saves for Chicago, and Vitek Vanecek made 23 stops for San Jose.

KRAKEN 6, FLYERS 4

SEATTLE (AP) — Eeli Tolvanen, Jordan Eberle, and Shane Wright scored three goals in less than three minutes in the second period and Seattle held off a Philadelphia rally in a victory.

Tolvanen’s goal broke a 2-2 tie at the 14:57 mark. Eberle made it a two-goal game with a goal at 17:44. Eight seconds later, Wright scored to give Seattle a three-goal lead.

Jared McCann tied the game at 2-2 with the first of Seattle’s four second-period goals.

Cam York and Jamie Drysdale scored to pull Philadelphia within 5-4 in the third period, but Oliver Bjorkstrand responded with a goal to push Seattle’s lead to two with just over five minutes left in the game.

Scott Laughton scored twice for the Flyers in the first period, while Brandon Montour scored one in for the Kraken.

Chandler Stephenson had an assist in his 500th NHL game. Seattle’s Philipp Grubauer had 21 saves.

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Canada’s Dabrowski, New Zealand’s Routliffe out of Japan Women’s Open after walkover

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1 day ago

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October 17, 2024

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OSAKA, Japan – Canada’s Gabriela Dabrowski and New Zealand’s Erin Routliffe are out of the Japan Women’s Open tennis tournament.

Spain’s Cristina Bucsa and Romania’s Monica Niculescu advanced to the final on Thursday by way of walkover.

The fourth seeds were supposed to play the top-seeded Dabrowski and Routliffe in the semifinals.

Bucsa and Niculescu will next face third-seeded Ena Shibahara of Japan and Laura Siegemund of Germany in the final.

Dabrowski and Routliffe defeated Japan’s Shuko Aoyama and Eri Hozumi in the quarterfinals 6-2, 6-4 on Wednesday to advance.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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Mountain West commissioner says she’s heartbroken over turmoil surrounding San Jose State volleyball

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1 day ago

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October 17, 2024

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LAS VEGAS (AP) — Mountain West Conference Commissioner Gloria Nevarez said Thursday the forfeitures that volleyball teams are willing to take to avoid playing San Jose State is “not what we celebrate in college athletics” and that she is heartbroken over what has transpired this season surrounding the Spartans and their opponents.

Four teams have canceled games against San Jose State: Boise State, Southern Utah, Utah State and Wyoming, with none of the schools explicitly saying why they were forfeiting.

A group of Nevada players issued a statement saying they will not take the floor when the Wolf Pack are scheduled to host the Spartans on Oct. 26. They cited their “right to safety and fair competition,” though their school reaffirmed Thursday that the match is still planned and that state law bars forfeiture “for reasons related to gender identity or expression.”

All those schools, except Southern Utah, are in the Mountain West. New Mexico, also in the MWC, went ahead with its home match on Thursday night, which was won by the Spartans, 3-1, the team’s first victory since Sept. 24.

“It breaks my heart because they’re human beings, young people, student-athletes on both sides of this issue that are getting a lot of national negative attention,” Nevarez said in an interview with The Associated Press at Mountain West basketball media days. “It just doesn’t feel right to me.”

Republican governors of Idaho, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming have made public statements in support of the cancellations, citing a need for fairness in women’s sports. Former President Donald Trump, the GOP nominee in this year’s presidential race, this week referenced an unidentified volleyball match when he was asked during a Fox News town hall about transgender athletes in women’s sports.

“I saw the slam, it was a slam. I never saw a ball hit so hard, hit the girl in the head,” Trump replied before he was asked what can be done. “You just ban it. The president bans it. You just don’t let it happen.”

After Trump’s comment, San Diego State issued a statement that said “it has been incorrectly reported that an San Diego State University student-athlete was hit in the face with a volleyball during match play with San Jose State University. The ball bounced off the shoulder of the student-athlete, and the athlete was uninjured and did not miss a play.”

San Jose State has not made any direct comments about the politicians’ “fairness” references, and Nevarez did not go into details.

“I’m learning a lot about the issue,” Nevarez said. “I don’t know a lot of the language yet or the science or the understanding nationally of how this issue plays out. The external influences are so far on either side. We have an election year. It’s political, so, yeah, it feels like a no-win based on all the external pressure.”

The cancellations could mean some teams will not qualify for the conference tournament Nov. 27-30 in Las Vegas, where the top six schools are slated to compete for the league championship.

“The student-athlete (in question) meets the eligibility standard, so if a team does not play them, it’s a forfeit, meaning they take a loss,” Nevarez said.

Ahead of the Oct. 26 match in Reno. Nevada released a statement acknowledging that “a majority of the Wolf Pack women’s volleyball team” had decided to forfeit against San Jose State. The school said only the university can take that step but any player who decides not to play would face no punishment.

___

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