By CHUCK POLLOCK, Wellsville Sun Senior Sports Columnist
My love affair with the Indianapolis 500 began five months before my sixth birthday.
It was courtesy of my father, who wasn’t a sports fan, but loved the race and listened to it religiously, on radio, start to finish.
I wasn’t sure exactly what was going on but the excitement in the announcer’s voices convinced me something special was happening.
If only I could see it.
But, alas, from May of 1951, it was 35 years before the arrogance of the Indy 500 administration deigned to permit their race to be televised.
But not in its entirety and not live.
An Indianapolis TV station broadcast the race live nine times between 1949-70, but only to Indiana, and in that era the Indy 500 was also shown on closed circuit TV in movie theaters..
In 1971, ABC-TV reached an agreement with race officials and began a string of 15 straight years of same-day, tape-delay telecasts (condensed two-hour shows).
Finally, in 1986, ABC got the rights to telecast the race live, start-to-finish, and that’s the way it’s been for the past 40 years.
SO, SUNDAY’s 109th renewal wasn’t particularly exciting race-wise, but there were compelling occurrences on the track and in the pits.
In all, eight cars were knocked from the 33-vehicle field, five on the track and three in the pits,
Let’s go in order.
1. During a warm-up lap, Scott McLaughlin, while trying to warm up his tires on the cool track, turned too far left and crashed into the wall. His race was finished even before the green flag fell.
2. On Lap 4, Marco Andretti, a member of the Indy 500’s most famous family, wouldn’t give up track position and was run into the wall by Jack Harvey and Marcus Armstrong. Those two finished the race but Andretti’s day was done.
3. During Lap 72, Alex Rossi’s car caught fire during a tire change. It was a scary sight, and his race was over though Rossi wasn’t injured.
4. Eight laps later, on pit road, Rinus VeeKay lost his brakes and smacked the wall, ending his race.
5. Lap 86 produced the scariest mishap. Pole-sitter Robert Shwartzman, attempting to pit, lost his brakes and hit three of his crew members, none of whom were seriously injured.
6. Kyle Larson, attempting to run the double of the Indy 500 and the Coca Cola 600 tangled with Sting Ray Robb on Lap 91 and both cars had their afternoon ended. Larson, then took a helicopter ride to Charlotte where he completed a different double … crashing out of both races.
7. We got only a glimpse of this last-lap crash as the announcers were so busy celebrating Alex Palou’s victory that they never revealed the victim. It was Nolan Siedel who hit the wall on the 200th and final lap.
(Chuck Pollock, a Wellsville Sun and Olean Star senior sports columnist, can be reached at cpollock@wnynet.net.)
