Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1980's

think I was in the wrong frame of mind. It was myself, Fred Merkel and Scott Gray running for the lead. I think it was a 21-lap ra ce and on about lap nine Fred had gotten th ething real sideways and I had been able to pull away from him a little. We had all been fussing with Scott Gray. I ran into him acou p le o ftimes because of the way he rides. He gets around a nd gets in yo ur way and wants to , I wouldn 't say play dirty, but we were having a hard time battling ba ck and forth. I had gotten away from him and Scott fell off in tum n ine. They couldn't get to him so th ey had to red-flag th e race. I knew when they red -flagged th e race that everyth in g would become equal again. Fred had gotten it sideways, real bad, and bent th e steering damper. I think he had m ade a wrong choice on th e tire. H e was going to get to change all that stuff. I can remember.Jim Moore, who he lped me get th e Starfire sponsorship, walking along with me and sayin g, " Now Wes, you 've got th e point lead; you don' t need towin this one." I was fuming. All I remember after the restart is leadin g the first lap and passing the start/finish line. I remember two things during a 12-day period after that. I remember being in the hospital and asking my wife Nancy where I had finished. She said, " You finished in the hospital , broke both yo ur legs and yo ur neck. " I sa id, "Boy, I sure screwed up." Then I remember , seven days later, I had a problem with a fat em bo lism. It's wh ere you 've broken some of your bones and th e bone marrow gets mto yo ur blood and it try s to kill you. It goes to your Iungs first th en up to your brain. I was very violent and they h ad to use arm restraints o n m e. On ' about the seventh day - this was all told to m e afterward - I sa id , " I don 't want to wear these arm restraints all th e time. So the doctor said take 'em off. They walked out of th e room and 15 minutes later I had th e halo pulled out of my head. , I actually stripped the bolts right out of my b rai n. A m ental attitude is necessary for rehabilitation - you have to be positive. ' Everyo ne in the' industry really he lped me come around. They helped me get out of the medical b ills. I had the largest southern Californian blood donation for an individual in history - 586 pints was donated in my name. I like to say thank you to everyo n e. It really pulled me through. What type of rehabilitation did you go thro ugh? God must have known I was going to race motorcycles because he allowed me to come back. The biggest problem I had getting rehabilitated was the fact that everyone kept telling me I shouldn't go back raang; that I was finished; that this wa s it. It pulled me back a little biL I wa s up walking, ,with a walker , in three months. But th e area of the spinal cord where I broke my neck turned out to co n tro l the motor nerves for my hands and I lost all the grip in my hands. I couldn't even pull up th e zipper on my pants. I've had a lot of broken bones, 17 of them during the co urse of m y career, and I can dea l wi th that. But to sit th ere and tell m y hands that I want them to close, to make a fist , and not be able to close my fingers was very frustrating for me. The thing with m y legs was just basically getting up and moving around. The rehabilitation wen t fairly easy for me as far as getting up and moving around. The b iggest p roblems were the nerves , the neck inj ury and getting m y hands back together. Kenny (Roberts) and I did th is 'art icle for Cycle Guide m agazi ne, wh en they were still being p ubl ished , comparing th e bikes we won ch ampionships on in 1980 with sta ndard motorcycles that they're producing now for the street. That was o ne of th e first times I had gone ba ck rid ing. It was very difficult for m e to use the clutch on the motorcycle because it was so stiff. My left hand hadn 't come back up to par. Now it' s n o problem. We Just ran a six-hour race at Talledega and I had no troubles; none whatsoever. .Wha t was rehabilitation like day by day? Because I was so extremely broken up, they didn't want me pushing anything q uickly. I was bedridden for a while so we used to have a ·h el ped me out tremendously. I can't say enough about Pen n y . Nicolai. She really helped me out. Sh e put on the a u ct io ns th ey had up at Laguna Seca a n d different pl aces. (Co m pa n ies ) like Honda ,a n d BMW dona ted motorcycles to be auctioned off for m e (a n d) Michelin tires helped o ut trem endously. And I ca n' t sa y en o u gh for the individuals, th e fan s th at sent me money. One gi rl wrote m e th is letter. She said, " I'm sorry I could only send $10 but I haven 't been working for the last six months." Sh e was willing to give me $10 and she hadn 't been working for six months l I eventua ll y paid it a ll off. I used some of my own money, too. , What happened to me , we all , as ra cers, know ca n happen. We never think about it. You don 't really prepare for it, financiall y. People who are part-time ra cers have insu- hands was very swollen from the impact. That's why I lost the grip in my hands, temporaril y. When did yo u decide to "let go" of professional road racing and ge t a "regular" job? Wes got tired of sitting around the h ouse. I enj o yed the motorcycl e in dustry and I had bills. I had some money socked away, but I didn 't want to use all m y nest egg. So I started looking around for a job. Joe Rich had recently gone to work for Continental (T ire) in the motorcycle division; he used to work with pun lop. They wer e looking for someone kind of like m e. I sent out a' resume, Joe called me in and said, "I think it will work." At the end o f 1986, Germany decided that mvposition was not going to be needed anymore; they moved m e into sa les. I am not 'd iscip lin ed enough for sales. Basi- Wes Cooley hopes to return to AMA/Camel Pro Series superbike racing sometime in the near future . masseuse come in, give me a massage and make sure all my m uscles were working properly. Because my right leg was shattered the doctor didn 't want me putting any weight on that at all. I sta rted walking prior to when he wanted me to and I broke the plate that was in the leg. Then I had to get back off it for another two weeks. It wa s a slow process. Because everyone kept telling me that I sh ou ld n ' t go ba ck ri di ng, I wondered, "What am I working out for ?" I don 't think it's right, now, bu t at the time it was a mental thing. I thought, " Wh at th e hell , everyone tell s me I sho uld n' t." Now I see how wrong that was. It took me a while to get back into th e flow of things. I'm back in th e flow of things now. I go to the gym about three times a week . I'm reall y trying to get the muscles back. l think that 's why my hands have improved so much recently. What's a ri der up against when he h as a serious crash li ke that? How d id yo u p ay for it? . I h ad about $86,000 in hospital bills. I h ad $15,000 of insurance with th e AMA. The Pro Rider Benefit Fund was th e ma in co n tri bu tor - Penn y Ni colai a n d D ick Hamer. They ranee through work that would probably uphold all their medi cal bills. Being a full-time ra cer , I ca lled around when I was working with Kawasaki to see if I could get in surance. Most of th e companies just laughed. They said. " No l" I talked to Lloyds (of London). Lloyds would do it - $2500 a month was th e esti ma ted premium. I was making good money at th e time but I . wasn ' t making that kind of m oney (laughs). I'm very fortunate to be able to sit here a n d talk to yo u. If yo u took out , a m icr ometer a nd measured how big o ne millimeter is, yo u would say, " Wo w! That's all it would have tak en ?" I asked th e doctor, "How co me I'm not paralyzed?" H e sa id he d idn 't know. His a na logy wa s, if yo u put an ice cube in a bag and yo u smacked it with a hammer , none o f the pieces got left under th e hammer; th ey all went to th e o u tside. T hat wa s ba sicall y what m y cervical vertebra was lik e. Ever- : thing went out, none of it went in . H e sai d if one little, tiny p iece had gone in I would have been paral yzed because it doesn 't repair itself. He sai d th e o ne area in th e sp inal co rd which contro ls the nerves in my cally, I worked four days a month for about 10 years of my life. We came to a mutual agreement at the end of 1986 to sep ara te. At that point, I was getting a little frustrated. Unfortunate ly, I had become addicted to a d re n a l i n e, racing motorcycl es. I kept thinkin,?, I need to make me happy. And If th at m eant going back riding motorcycles, no matter how stu p id that might be in someone else 's opinion, that's what I wanted to do. I believe in destiny. If m y ticket gets yanked, it 's m y tum to die. I co u ld walk out o f th is bu ilding right now and a drunk could run me over. I may be tempting (dea th) by riding a motorcycle but a t least I'm happy doing that, I didn't get a chance to say Wes wanted to stop . The injury forced me to stop, Now, if things don't work out for me - if I' m as o ld and as slow as they think I am - th en I can sa y I want to stop, And it won 't be the accident, or everyo ne else, telling me to sto p . Did yo u r decision to get back into racing cause the breakup of yo u r marriage? No. Wrong. That's fal se. Nancy liked tra velin g with me. She was having a great time. T he n we had the kids (a daughter, Alexis, 19

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