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After racing cars Zanardi eyes paralympic medal
Source: Agencies |
September 6, 2012, Thursday
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ALEX Zanardi, the former F1 driver is vying for a Paralympic medal in paracycling - a hand cycle powered by the arms - at the Brands Hatch race track, where he once raced cars. It's really incredible, when you realize the 45-year-old almost died in a horrific accident in a 2001 CART race in Germany.
"For a brief moment I found myself thinking of all the things I've done," Zanardi said on Twitter. "I'm a lucky boy!"
His journey to the Paralympics began at the American Memorial 500 on September 15, 2001, at the Eurospeedway Lausitz in Germany. Zanardi, a former two-time CART champion, had started 22nd in a field of 27. He was enjoying the drive, passing one car after another, until with 13 laps to go he was in the lead.
Zanardi went into his final pit stop and the crew chief waved him off: "Go, go, go!"
But the car veered onto the track and Canadian driver Alex Tagliani, traveling at close to 320 kph, could not avoid him. On the track, Dr. Terry Trammel slipped and fell as he raced to the wreckage. He thought he had fallen in oil, but it was Zanardi's blood.
The crash had severed Zanardi's right leg at the knee and his left at the thigh some five inches above the knee. The driver's lower legs had disintegrated like those of land mine victims. He had lost 70 percent of his blood, his pelvis was fractured in five places and he had a lacerated liver. At the hospital, Zanardi's wife, Daniela, told him he had lost his legs.
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