By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor
Kurt Busch was sitting in a chair he didn’t want to be in Sundary afternoon. He would rather have been strapped in to his usual seat in his NASCAR Cup car, racing three-dozen other drivers on the three-quarter mile track at Richmond.
But for the fourth weekend in a row the 2004 Cup champion was ruled unfit to race because of a concussion incurred in a qualifying crash at Pocono last month. He appeared unhurt when he got out of the car but doctors at the infield care center determined he was showing concussion symptoms.
Concussion protocols have become a much more important issue in sports at all levels in the last decade, highlighted by auto racing’s Dale Earnhardt Junior’s struggles in 2016 when he missed the second half of the NASCAR season. He retired at the end of the 2017 season, a season that began with the abrupt retirement of Columbia driver Carl Edwards, whose run for the 2016 championship had ended with a hard crash at Atlanta.
Edwards gave three reasons for leaving the sport. The third was his health. “I can stand here healthy after all the racing I’ve done and all the stupid stuff I’ve done in racecars. I’m a sharp guy and I want to be a sharp guy in thirty years.”
Edwards’ wife, Kate, is a doctor who works with people who have severe and traumatic brain injuries.
What do doctors look for when assessing concussions (and a person’s recovery from them?
The Mayo Clinic says someone, such as Busch after his crash, might not show signs and symptoms until hours or days after the injury. Busch apparently did show signs because he was quickly ruled out of that weekend’s race at Pocono.
Doctors run some neurological tests that check on a person’s vision, hearing, strength and sensation, balance, coordination, and reflexes. There also are cognitive tests—how thinking skills are working. Memory, ability to concentrate and the ability to recall information are part of that evaluation.
If the person shows signs and symptoms of severe headaches, seizures, repeated vomiting or worsening symptoms, brain imaging might be needed to see if there is bleeding of brain swelling.
The standard test to determine the condition of the brain right after an injury is a computerized tomography scan (or as they say in every episode of Grey’s Anatomy, CT scan).
And a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) can be sued to identify brain changes or complications.
The great 1950s and 1960s English Grand Prix driver Sterling Moss, who raced long before sophisticated concussion evaluations, decided after a horrible crash in his Lotus that he knew his brain was no longer fit for him to race when he had to think about doing things he had previously done automatically.
Whether it is race drivers or athletes in general, head injuries that leave them having to think about what they normally would do automatically is a sign that they need to step out of the arena until the automatic response returns. Sometimes it doesn’t and the person risks greater harm by trying to bull through the condition.
That’s why concussion protocols are so important in sports. It’s dangerous to the individual and sometimes to those also in the game with them to play before they have recovered. Self-assessment cannot be tolerated.
As Kurt Busch put it when he was ruled unfit for last weekend’s race at Richmond:
“Brain injury recovery doesn’t always take a linear path. I’ve been feeling well in my recovery, but this week I pushed to get my heart rate and body in a race simulation type environment, and it’s clear I’m not ready to be back in the race car.”
For Kurt Busch, the brain is more important than trying to win another trophy, a recognition that now exists across various sports platforms. Infield care hospitals or tents on the sidelines—they’re all signs that the idea of “playing through an injury” is increasingly unacceptable.
As Carl Edwards put it: “I’m a sharp guy and I want to be a sharp guy in thirty years.”
(NASCAR)—Kevin Harvick had so much fun finally winning another race a week ago that he decided to do it again—at Richmond, where he took the lead after the last round of pit stops and then held on to beat the charging Christopher Bell, on fresher tires, by four-tenths of a second.
The win is number 60 in his career, moving him to ninth place on the all-time winner’s list.
Only two races remain in the regular season. Ryan Blaney, who has yet to win this year, is the only non-winner in the playoffs and he widened his points advantage over Martin Truex Jr., for the last of 16 playoff slots. If a non-winner claims one of the last two races, other than those two, both will miss the playoffs although they are second and forth in the overall points standings.
The Series moves to the Watkins Glen road course next weekend.
(INDYCAR)—INDYCAR runs the first of its last three races of the 2022 season at Worldwide Technology Raceway across the river from St. Louis next Saturday.
(FORMULA 1)—Formula 1 ends its summer break with the Grand Prix of Belgium on August 28, the fourteenth race in the 22-race season.
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