Sunday afternoon, in the midst of a good slate of National Football League games, millions of people were glued to the television or a computer screen. Instead of pigskin and fantasy football, though, we watched history.
I don’t remember feeling the mix of emotions from watching anything on television that compares to what I felt watching Felix Baumgartner for a solid hour. As he went through his checklist of preparations at 127,000 feet, sat calmly as that hatch swung open and exposed him to the stratosphere and then slowly unfolded himself, stood at the edge of the abyss, saluted and dropped off, I felt some combination of exhilaration, amazement and dread.
And I was sitting on a couch, firmly planted on a floor.
If you could stack the list of ways Baumgartner’s mission was amazing and put it under the Red Bull Stratos, his jump might have been something like falling out of bed rather than out of space.
Still, I couldn’t help but think about the enhancing effect science has had on sports over the decades.
We can argue about what constitutes “sports” and what doesn’t, but I’m going to use a rather wide definition here. “Extreme athletes” like Baumgartner aren’t playing traditional sports, obviously, but the nature of the competitiveness and physical training are enough to at least say there’s a sporting element involved.
Primarily, science has been used to enhance the product on the field or in the arena—no baseball jokes, please—and to enhance player safety. We take these sorts of things for granted. It’s changed the way hockey sticks are made and the way football players are padded.
But what about when science begets more risk?
Part of the dread in watching Baumgartner’s jump was the very real possibility that something could go wrong and the reality that he would likely not survive if it did.
It reminded me of another feeling of dread I had watching sports, which happened this time last year.
Tuesday marked the one-year anniversary of Dan Wheldon’s death at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Wheldon, a two-time Indianapolis 500 champion, was involved in a horrific crash 11 laps in to the 2011 IndyCar finale that launched his car into the air for several hundred feet before hitting the safety fencing on the side of the track.
Crashes happen all the time in racing, but it was very apparent that this one had the chance to be tragic right when it happened. IndyCar officials announced Wheldon’s death about two hours later, and the drivers made a slow, five-lap salute to their buddy, nicknamed “Lionheart.”
The analogy here isn’t perfect. Science, by and large, has made open-wheel racing safer. The cars are designed better, advanced suits protect drivers more than they used to and the tracks are fitted with the best padding and safety mechanisms we have.
And still, everybody knew the speeds at Las Vegas would be even faster than normal and that the design of the track lent itself to perilous race conditions. Drivers commented on the combination of higher-than-normal speeds and steep banks at the racetrack in the lead-up to Oct. 16.
Wheldon did not race with a team full-time in 2011. He had parted ways with Panther Racing after 2010 and won the 2011 Indy 500 with Bryan Herta Autosport. He entered the Las Vegas race as the only participant in the GoDaddy.com Challenge. His task was to start last and finish first. If he accomplished that, he was to split a $5 million prize with a randomly selected fan.
For regular people, it can be hard to comprehend the insatiable appetite for a challenge that drives people like Baumgartner and Wheldon.
In a moving tribute before the 2012 Indy 500, a 2008 clip of the dynamic Englishman shows him saying, “To be honest, the reason drivers don’t like talking about the danger of this sport is that it tempts fate. Do I believe it’ll ever happen to me? No. Could it happen to me? Absolutely. But at the end of the day, if your time’s up, your time’s up.”
We watch sports and follow athletes for the chance to see something amazing happen. We watch for moments like Baumgartner calmly touching down on terra firma with both feet. We watch for moments like the 2012 Indy 500 when, with the memories of the race’s reigning champion present throughout, Wheldon’s three best friends in racing, Dario Franchitti, Scott Dixon and Tony Kanaan finished first, second and third, respectively. The same three guys who served as pallbearers at his funeral just six months previous.
We watch sports because, every once in a while, guys like Dan Wheldon come around and make them too good to miss. And it never lasts long enough.
Did you watch Baumgartner’s jump? What do you think of science and technology’s role in today’s sports world? Let Parker know what you think at sports@dailycardinal.com.
