Brownstown Speedway
Stapleton's reset after life-threatening ailment
By Bryan Ault
Special to DirtonDirt
Chad Stapleton at Brownstown Speedway. (Bryan Ault photo)
BROWNSTOWN, Ind. (May 31) — Before going under the knife on April 2, Chad Stapleton didn’t know if he would live or die.
The 49-year-old Edinburgh, Ind., racer, a longtime regular in Late Model divisions at Brownstown Speedway, had been diagnosed with hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy, a disease that thickens the heart. If Stapleton didn’t undergo surgery at the Cleveland Clinic, doctors didn’t expect him to live another 12 months. | RaceWire
“I went to the doctor for just a standard heart checkup, because I knew there was something going on,” Stapleton said Saturday at the Jackson County Fairgrounds oval, where Kent Robinson was piloting his car. “They come in and they said that they go by a CT score. And they said 400 was severe, and I was like 870. So, they thought at that point it was just like blockage, but once I went and seen a cardiologist, that's when he found the disease.
“I always like to be the happy-go-lucky person, have a lot of fun, but, you know, things got pretty real.”
Stapleton knew something was amiss after a mini-stroke last year. He felt short-of-breath. He was constantly gasping for air, and struggling to have energy for everyday tasks.
“All the signs was pointing to it, and thank God they found it,” he said.
Stapleton quickly rushed off to the renowned hospital in Cleveland, Ohio. Doctors unexpectedly knocked on his door at 6 a.m. and told him it was time to go under the knife.
“I was supposed to be with my family,” he said. “And, you know, you always want to say the right things to your family, your kids, your loved ones, and you never say those things because we take everything for granted. So, they come in, they're like, ‘Hey, we got to go. We need your room.’ And so I didn’t get to say (stuff) to the people I loved, do you know what I'm saying? And for me, that was the biggest thing, man. That's when (stuff) got real and I was like, ‘Damn, man, this has got really real.’ ”
“I come down a hallway, man, there was like, six, eight, 10 people in that hallway waiting to have open-heart surgery or some kind of open-heart procedure done. And I was like, holy s---. It was crazy. And when the anesthesiologist, he came in and when he done his deal, like my little nurse dude, he kept it real. He said, ‘One of two things, we're going to leave his room today, but where are we going to go? I mean, you're either going to see clouds, or you’re going to see faces?’ ”
“I was like, ‘Yep, you got it.’ And he said, ‘Man, I got faith in you, do you got faith?’ I said, ‘I believe, brother.’ And he said, ‘I believe, too.’ And we fist-bumped, and the next thing I know, I woke up with tubes in my mouth.”
The surgery was successful for the veteran racer, an always smiling presence at Brownstown quick with a quip. Stapleton, who now bears a long scar from his stomach up to his sternum, made his first trip back to the track Saturday during the Northern Allstars-sanctioned Hoosier Dirt Classic with Bloomington, Ind.’s Robinson aboard his Longhorn Chassis. Stapleton’s cardiologist, whom he affectionately calls a “gangster,” has said he can get behind the wheel himself, soon.
“Hell, I don't know what normal people do on the weekends,” he quipped. “That's just the biggest thing and I truly didn't think that I would be back at a dirt track this early, but at this point it's up to me, you know? I've started golfing again. I still suck at golf. I asked (the doctors) to take five strokes off my game and like a half-second off my racing laps, and neither one of them’s happened.”
The last time he drove a Super Late Model was in October. His target for returning to the driver’s seat is for a June 21 event at Brownstown.
“I'm going to try in a couple weeks, see what we got,” he said. “May be able to do it, I may not, who knows? I'm ready to get back at it, but I do I have fun with Kent. Kent's a good dude, kind of helps us both out with him teaming up a little bit. It's fun.”
Until then, Robinson plans to race Stapleton’s car, including at June 5-7’s $100,000-to-win Dream at Eldora Speedway at Rossburg, Ohio. Provided Stapleton checks out health-wise, he will continue to race with Robinson in Stapleton’s family-owned machine, primarily around Brownstown and the surrounding area.
“All this racing stuff, it's gotten … it's just so much money involved in it,” Stapleton said. “These big teams that tour around, you know, those guys are the best, they earn it for a reason.
“It's just hard to compete with things like that, but as long as I can have fun and be competitive, like I said, locally and regionally, and then some of the big stuff, Kent’ll probably do. And you know, the biggest thing is just go have some fun. But once we stop being competitive locally, then I guess it's when I’ll buy a damn boat.”
