Compassion For Fallen Stars

There was far more good will directed toward Michael Schumacher after his terrible skiing accident than there ever was during his F1 career. This worldwide demonstration of compassion is a credit to the basic human decency of F1 fans. It is also a reminder of the profound effect F1 stars can have on the lives of fans.

Who can forget the tremendous out-pouring of grief when Ayrton Senna was killed. Like Schumacher, popular opinion was strongly divided as to whether he was a hero or a villain, but the universal mourning after Senna’s death left no doubt about the depth of heartfelt emotion he inspired even among his former detractors.

The late Gilles Villeneuve was always a hero, and remains so to millions of fans. Long after he was killed letters addressed to him were received by Ferrari. In one of them a grief-stricken 21-year-old woman wrote of her despair: ‘Hello Gilles. I still cannot believe that you are no more... I did not know the great Nuvolari but I will talk to my daughter with pride about you. I will be able to tell her that I delighted in you and that I cried for you. I have within me a sense of infinite emptiness that I feel nothing will be able to fill except my tears. I hope that up there you have found a circuit and when the starting light is green, go Gilles. You will always be first. When I look up towards a starry sky I see you in the most beautiful star. The brightest one. And I am sure for you up there, you think of us, you think of me, who died in my heart with you. One day I shall bring you a rose because you were my first shattered dream.’

Some fans find unique ways to perpetuate the memory of a fallen star. Once, while in a bookshop signing copies of my biography of Gilles Villeneuve, I met a man who told me he came from a poor family and had to leave school to go to work before he learned to read properly. He said Villeneuve meant so much to him that he was determined to know everything about him, so he used my book to teach himself to understand the written word. He said he had now read the book three times and asked me to sign his well-worn copy. I asked him who I should dedicate the book to. He pointed to the small boy standing beside him. “Please sign the book ‘To Gilles.’ I was such a Villeneuve fan that I named my son after my hero.”

Just as memories of a lost driver can live on in the hearts and minds of fans their collective compassion is surely a powerful force that can be beneficial to an injured driver. The last two F1 drivers to be seriously injured, Robert Kubica and Felipe Massa, both said the sheer volume of Get Well Soon messages from fans helped them on the road to recovery. Let’s hope this is the case with Michael Schumacher.

See the following post for some insight into MS, and more at an earlier post - Thursday October 4, 2012 - entitled 'Michael's Dream Comes True'