A few weeks ago I picked up this book, read it through in a weekend. It's one of the best sports books I've read in a while -- funny, vivid and well-done. Early on, it retells the story of the 1979 Daytona 500, the one we all remember with the fight at the end.
As longtime readers will know, for many years we've made annual trips to Daytona Beach. Sometimes we've gone to see the 24-hour race, and other times we've just gone for a long weekend. It's a special place for us both; it was the destination of the first overnight trip we took together, and for hubby it's a special place because that's where he went to college, learning how to work on airplanes. Sometimes he'd get to help out at the Speedway, lending a hand in the parking lots, and sometimes he'd be in the neighborhood when history was made. (My favorite is his story of being around there in 1983 when a certain Mr. Foyt, whose original entry retired early, was called back in to help another team and emerged victorious in his first Porsche outing).
Daytona Beach was expanding like mad the first time I visited ten years ago. Now, it's unrecognizable from even then. Every time we go back, hubby looks for familiar landmarks, and they're going away too. And, of course, Daytona International Speedway looks nothing like it did back then. The track's the same shape and Lake Lloyd is still there, but it seems everything else has been so extensively modified, rebuilt or replaced that it's hard to recognize sometimes. I can see pictures of how the place used to look, or see old television footage, and remember seeing it on television when I was a kid. Now, sometimes, you have to remind yourself it's the same place. Different, but it's the same speedway.
With that in mind, here's some footage from that first televised flag-to-flag Daytona 500 in 1979. This piece gives you a good overview of the challenges of televising it, and also a taste of how significant it all was. (It's also enjoyable to see Ken Squier talk about it -- and to see footage of a younger Ken Squier and David Hobbs -- and it's also neat to see and hear the original billboard, with longtime CBS Sports announcer Don Robertson's voiceover.) Then here's the opening laps, which were run under caution. Yes, it's a parade with no excitement (save for a Brock Yates interview with Herb Nab -- and, unfortunately, footage of a horrifying crash from the previous day's Sportsman race that, while it didn't kill one of the drivers involved, did leave him a prisoner in his own body for the rest of his life). But it's worth watching because it gives you so many chances to see what it used to look like there. It was the days before the colossal grandstand down the back stretch, before the Winston Tower, before the huge country-club looking garage and hospitality complexes in the infield.
(For the record, I think I may vaguely remember that weekend in 1979. If memory serves, we were among those blitzed by the weather, and we were without power most of that weekend, so I doubt we watched the race. I don't think I would have remembered it if we had, anyway. Most of what I remember involves huddling by the fireplace in the den of our then-new house, and spending the night in sleeping bags.)
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