Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s biggest victory was raising concussion awareness
For everything he accomplished on the race track, and there was plenty, nothing carried as much weight as what Dale Earnhardt Jr. did off of it.
By being open and honest about his concussions and the impact they had not just on his racing career but his entire life, Earnhardt broadened the discussion about head trauma. Be it other athletes, his fans or people who just recognized his famous last name, there are countless others who are better because of his struggles.
“I’ve been waiting for the last 10 years for somebody to be that proactive,” said Chris Nowinski, co-founder of the Concussion Legacy Foundation, a partner of the Veterans Administration-Boston University brain bank. “I hope more athletes realize the power they have in changing this conversation and the role they can play.
“Dale Jr. has set the bar.”
Earnhardt announced Tuesday that he will retire from NASCAR’s Cup series at the end of this season. His health is good now, but his experience last season, when he missed the last 18 races after his second concussion in four years, made him realize how fine the line can be in contact sports.
One day you’re doing what you love most, racing around a track at 125 mph or more. The next you’re simply trying to get your eyes to focus and wondering if your world will ever look normal again.
“I had a lot to think about over the last several months. I was not sure that I would have the opportunity to compete,” Earnhardt said during a news conference at Hendrick Motorsports. “I wanted to be able to make that decision myself on retiring and not really have it made for me.”
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Troy Aikman and Steve Young retired before the dangers of repetitive head trauma were widely understood. Even the heartbreaking stories of retired NFL players committing suicide or struggling with dementia were too easy to write off as a casualty of a bygone era.
But it was different when it came to Junior, NASCAR’s favorite son and the Everyman of American sports. When he talked about his concussions and the toll they were taking, sparing no details, it got everyone’s attention.
NASCAR changed its medical protocol, requiring that all national touring series use the same concussion test – the SCAT-3 – to screen drivers for head injuries. Other drivers saw first-hand the damage a concussion could do.
“It was pretty interesting to see how it did affect him and it didn’t affect me, so it was like it kind of gave me a sense of what he was feeling,” Martin Truex told USA TODAY Sports’ Brant James this year, recounting the time he did the visual training exercises Earnhardt did as part of his recovery.
“I couldn’t imagine how tough it would be to get through that,” Truex added. “How simple something is to somebody who’s healthy, compared to how difficult something could be that seems easy.”
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Most importantly, Earnhardt’s openness brought home the seriousness of the issue for fans who might have ignored or not given much thought to the NFL’s concussion settlement or studies that show the dangers of head trauma in contact sports.
Earnhardt had already pledged his brain to Nowkinski's group for research before his second concussion. But to see Junior, the fun-loving, hard-charging guy who won the Daytona 500 twice and was voted NASCAR’s Most Popular Driver a record 14 years in a row, forced out of his car because he “got his bell rung,” well, that put head trauma in a whole new, more serious light.
“The stigma of going through post-concussion syndrome is slowly going away because of the contributions of Dale Jr. and other athletes,” Nowinski said. “I didn’t see people questioning his toughness.
“The more he shared, the more he advanced that approach.”
Earnhardt has seen this himself.
People write him letters or will approach him at the track to tell him how he’s helped their understanding of head trauma. And as he kept the public updated on his recovery last year, including his work with doctors at the University of Pittsburgh, he “had some people come out of the woods” asking where they could get help. He gets letters
“To hear their success stories … it’s been a tremendous experience for me,” Earnhardt said.
The record book will show Earnhardt won at Dayton, Talladega and Pocono, among others. But his biggest victory was in raising awareness about head trauma.
Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on Twitter @nrarmour.
