SPARTA, Ky. -- One by one, the dignitaries paraded across the stage to congratulate Kentucky Speedway and owner Bruton Smith on finally acquiring a Sprint Cup Series race for the 1.5-mile track. The governor, the leaders of the Kentucky house and senate, the track's general manager, the president of the facility's parent company, a senior vice president of NASCAR -- they each took their turn at the podium. Only one man on the stage didn't give a speech.

Shoot, Jerry Carroll didn't even want to be up there to begin with, wouldn't have been at all unless Smith and general manager Mark Simendinger hadn't twisted his arm. It seemed strange, the founder of Kentucky Speedway, the man who had the original vision and led the fight to land a date on NASCAR's premier circuit, staying quiet. Then again, what exactly was he supposed to say?

“

You're always satisfied when your dream happens.

”

-- JERRY CARROLL

"I really thought it was cumbersome for me to give a speech," Carroll said after Tuesday's formal ceremony. "What do you say? Everybody else was going to thank Bruton and all that kind of stuff, and I really didn't think there was a fitting thing for me to say. And I wasn't going to congratulate myself. ... I didn't even want to sit on the stage, and they said, 'No you've got to sit on the stage. You have to do it.' And Bruton's the one that said it. Bruton has been very kind to me. But it's a different era, it's a different time. We did our thing. The recognizable thing is that somebody had to have the original idea."

And that idea belonged to Carroll, the Indiana-born developer who once owned the Turfway Park thoroughbred track and 11 years ago set his sights on horsepower that comes from engines rather than hooves. It was Carroll who saw what no one else did, this sprawling, Cup-ready facility in what was once a Gallatin County farm. It was Carroll who put in motion the process that drew sold-out Nationwide and Truck events to this venue between Cincinnati and Louisville, who bore the frustration of not being able to secure a Cup event, who took the blame when heavy rains bogged down that first NASCAR race in 2000 or when the track's ownership group decided to try and strong-arm the sanctioning body with a lawsuit.

Two years ago he sold to Smith for roughly $78 million, realizing the only way his creation was going to reach NASCAR's big time was to turn it over to someone with more chess pieces on the scheduling board. Ultimately that's what happened, with Smith's Speedway Motorsports Inc. company taking an underperforming spring date from sister facility Atlanta Motor Speedway and turning it into a Saturday night event in the Bluegrass State beginning in July 2011.

"Without Bruton, we wouldn't have a race. In all candor, we couldn't get a race done," Carroll said. "We could build the facility, we could have the dream, but you had to be in that inner circle to make something happen. Bruton's been very good to me, and Bruton made it happen. There's only one guy in the world that could make it happen. One guy in the world. NASCAR, those guys weren't going to make it happen. I went out and got Bruton Smith. I went out and got Bruton Smith, he didn't come to me."

But it was Carroll who saw this track in what was then known as Craig Farm. Three-time NASCAR champion Darrell Waltrip, a native of Owensboro, Ky., who became an advocate and an advisor to the speedway, remembers Carroll showing him the property before the facility was built.

"I think [he's] a huge, huge, huge visionary. And visionaries scare me, because they see things and they do things you would never think about doing," Waltrip said. "They see things you could never imagine. And that's what Jerry Carroll is. We drove up there on the road, and he said, 'The track's going to be here. See how that bank lays right in there? That's where we're going to put the track, and there's going to be the grandstand, and wait until we get around back and look at this property, campgrounds, this and that.' He had it figured out. And there wasn't anything but a bunch of trees. I said, 'Somebody who can think that big, take me along for the ride.' "

It wasn't easy. The track rose out of the rolling earth, and Nationwide and Truck events drew crowds that exceeded even the facility's seating capacity of 66,000, but a Cup date seemed a mirage. Venerable Indianapolis Motor Speedway, two and a half hours to the north, was just too close. So the ownership of Kentucky Speedway, likely taking their cue from a lawsuit brought by a shareholder of Texas Motor Speedway that ultimately resulted in a settlement and a second date for the Fort Worth track, brought suit against NASCAR, alleging that the sanctioning body violated federal antitrust rules by not allowing facilities to bid for events. (Continued)