Racing deaths teach us cruel lessons

It's been a tough week for race fans, with deaths of two major stars shaking our belief in sports that give us so much joy. 

Marco Simoncelli was known for his wild hair and wild abandon on the racetrack.Today brought the death of rising motorcycle-racing star Marco Simoncelli, just a week after Dan Wheldon lost his life in an IndyCar race. 

Simoncelli was killed in a horrific MotoGP crash at Sepang. He was in fourth place when he lost control of his bike and was run over by another racer who had nowhere to go. The race was red flagged (SpeedTV's Dave Despain has a nice tribute to Simoncelli).

Wheldon died early into a very fast IndyCar race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. I was at the track last Sunday, sitting high in the Turn 4 end of the front straightaway. The 15-car crash that took Wheldon's life was halfway across the track so it was hard to grasp the extent of Wheldon's injuries from so far away. 

Today's IndyCars are relatively safe despite racing at 200-230 mph. And seeing car bodies explode on impact is actually a good thing; by design a chassis that breaks apart dissipates energy from the cockpit. So, drivers walk away from most crashes, even those at 220 mph. 

But it didn't take too long to realize something was amiss last Sunday as track workers moved from a fast-paced cleanup to one more methodical, almost as if race officials had told them, "stretch it out."  I've seen more than a hundred races of all types and had never seen death in person. But in my gut  as I watched from the stands, I knew things were likely not going to end well. And so did the thousands of others around us, who were sharing rumors and checking their phones for any updates. 

I've always shared the traditional race mantra that when death strikes, "the race must go on." But as I caught the first news of Wheldon's death on my smartphone -- long before the news was officially announced at the track -- I told my wife, "Let's go. Even if they restart, we're not going to enjoy it."

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