When it comes to the category of Sports That Endanger the Lives of Their Specators, there are very few than can hold a candle to hockey. At a hockey game, you can get covered in shattered glass, have a player show you their new knuckle, get in the way of a ricocheted 90mph slapper or be attacked by a coach or player. Ah, yes. There’s really nothing quite like it.
In football, you’re really too far away to have anything other than maybe a field goal casually float your way (although they have nets to protect folks from those). Baseball fans bring gloves, so they’re generally protected unless a bat or feral cat gets loose. The NBA is pretty mundane outside of the Malice at the Palace and golf, well, for as much as the patrons try to squeeze as close as they can to the action, rarely get hit.
And then there’s NASCAR. I don’t think there’s anything that could frighten even the toughest person quite like sitting in the front row for one of those. If you watch the minor league races, the first few rows are generally empty. Yeah, it’s one of the few sports where people don’t want to sit in the front row. Take yesterday’s race. On the final turn, Brad Keselowski was in second and tried to pass Carl Edwards on the inside. Edwards, in his finest “I’m going to win this race or die trying” moment, tried to block Keselowski. Well, turns out Edwards didn’t realize that Keselowski had started to creep along side of him and, well, I’ll let the video explain the rest.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXwpsaHueUk&w=425&h=344]
Yes, I don’t think there’s any sporting event anywhere more dangerous than one that allows you to pay for the privlidge of getting hit in the face with a race car going 200 mph.
What really confuses me about all this is how the announcers proclaimed immediately after the crash that nobody was hurt in the stands thanks to the re-inforced fence. That, despite it being unbeliveably apparent in the video (or seeing it live) that spectators were on the recieving end of flying metal, be it from the car or fence. Anyway, the important thing is that none of the injuries were life threatening. Which basically means that “they got hurt but they’re not going to die.” So there’s a group of people who went to a NASCAR race and are going to have an unbelieveable story to tell about the time they survived almost being hit in the face with a speeding race car.
And I think I’ve just filled our NASCAR-related post quota for the year.
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