Line between racing and spectacle blurred at 'Dega

It's the twilight zone of the Nextel Cup circuit, a strange and mysterious place full of bizarre happenings that seem to occur only in one particular corner of the Alabama hills. For years rumors have persisted that it was built on the site of an American Indian burial ground, and all the odd and ominous events that followed were the manifestation of spirits seeking revenge. None of that is true, of course. But if Joseph Conrad had ever written a novel about NASCAR, his subject would surely have been Talladega Superspeedway.

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And why not? Perhaps no major sporting facility on the planet is as equal parts tragic, triumphant, turbulent and terrible as Talladega, which has been a flashpoint of controversy since the day it was born. When it was scratched out of the red clay earth in 1969, the place then called Alabama International Motor Speedway was too big and too fast for the era in which is was built. Tires burned up like meteorites entering the atmosphere. Richard Petty and other top drivers boycotted the first race over safety concerns. The show went on, and has ever since.

Sometimes, with spectacular results. The place can be mesmerizing, with all those cars running so close together it seems drivers could reach out and touch one another, screaming along in a three-wide, 14-deep tornado of noise. It can be majestic, as it was when Dale Earnhardt somehow passed all those cars in the waning laps to earn his final victory in the fall of 2000, or when Jeff Gordon did something very similar to pass the Intimidator on NASCAR's career victory list this past spring, And it can be mean, as it was in 1993 when contact sent the car of Jimmy Horton flying up the banking, over the Turn 1 wall, out of the racetrack and onto an access road beyond.

"I knew I was in trouble," Horton would say later, "when the first guy who got to me was holding a beer."

Only in Talladega. Another driver, Stanley Smith, suffered a crushed skull and a severed neck artery in the same accident, and nearly died. Such cruel episodes have long been an unfortunate trademark of this 2.66-mile racetrack, where the close, fast action that spectators love to see can come with a terrible price. Just ask Bobby Allison, who in 1987 blew a tire and pinwheeled into the catchfence in a terrifying accident that ripped out 100 yards of netting and injured some fans. Just ask Rusty Wallace, who suffered a broken wrist and a concussion when he barrel-rolled through the tri-oval in 1993. Just ask Bill Elliott, who broke his leg in a single-car accident in 1996.

They were the lucky ones. Drivers Larry Smith and Tiny Lund were killed in racing accidents at Talladega. Randy Owens, a crewman and Petty's brother-in-law, died when a pressurized water tank he was using to extinguish a pit-road fire exploded. Davey Allison perished when the helicopter he was piloting crashed in what's now the parking lot for the track's infield media center.

There are those chapters of Talladega lore that almost defy explanation, like when Bobby Isaac abruptly parked his car on the track's pit road and retired, claiming voices had told him to do so. Like when the mayor of nearby Eastaboga, Ala., held a news conference to announce that the first flight had been achieved not by the Wright Brothers, but a local physician and Civil War veteran who had allegedly beaten Orville and Wilbur by 13 months. Like when the U.S. Army's stash of chemical weapons was being destroyed in nearby Anniston, Ala., and televised public service announcements urged residents "prepare safe rooms" and "know their evacuation zones" in the unlikely event of an accidental release.

Only in Talladega, the Bermuda Triangle of stock-car racing, where fires in the big campground off Interstate 20 seem to burn all night, and wood smoke coats the place in an acrid, ghostly haze. The place that gave the world the horsepower-reducing restrictor plate has a menacing quality, from the impossibly wide expanse of the grandstand to the sheer drop-off from atop the 33-degree banking to the horrific accidents that drivers have thankfully walked away from in recent years. Before they repaved it, nefarious veins of black tar snaked though the racing surface. It looked less like a speedway and more like the hide of a dinosaur.

No wonder drivers swallow hard before they kiss their wives, slide into their cockpits, and flip the ignition switches on another 500 miles of white-knuckle competition. They're strapping in for a long, fast afternoon at a track where multi-car pileups are accepted as the norm, where someone is likely to go tumbling through the air, where the line between racing and spectacle is blurred until it's no longer visible. And the big crowd will cheer though every perilous, stomach-churning second of it, and when it's finally over some in the stands will throw beer cans at the winner.

Only in Talladega. Thank goodness.

The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.