xopher
09-11-2008, 07:57 AM
Cindy McCain doesn't remember all the details. It might have been six years ago. Maybe seven. But this much, at least, McCain recalls with perfect clarity: She was watching television with her oldest son, Jack, when footage flashed across the screen of race cars skidding sideways as though they were on ice.
Looks kind of cool, McCain thought to herself, but how'd they do that?
For most people, the curiosity probably would have ended there. But McCain, the wife of the Republican nominee for president, Sen. John McCain, is anything but ordinary. Although a wide swath of the public views her as reserved and distant, she is actually quite the opposite in private. When Cindy McCain, 54, encounters something that intrigues her, she embraces it with the zeal of a toddler on Christmas Eve.
And so McCain began to learn as much as possible about this mysterious driving technique. It turned out it was called drifting and had origins tracing back to the mountains of central Japan in the early 1990s. Months after first seeing drifting on television, McCain traveled to Japan with Jack, now a senior at the Naval Academy and an avid fan of motorsports, to take drifting lessons with a top instructor.
"I love it," McCain said, though she described herself as a below-average drifter. "I'm probably a little too cautious with it because it is abnormal from what you're taught when you're taught to drive. You're taught to keep control of your car. Everything you were taught in driver's ed, forget. That's what drifting is about."
...
In an exclusive interview with E:60's Lisa Salters, Cindy McCain credits her son, Jack, with helping her to recover from a stroke in 2004 by pushing her to drive race cars.
Some drifters employ the emergency brake; others rely more on the clutch. But every method requires lots of practice, not to mention a modicum of chutzpah.
When told that McCain was into drifting, Gardiner was speechless for a few moments. "It's... absolutely... incredulous," he said. "If you look at Sen. McCain, he looks like the archetypal grandfather. And to find out that his missus is into drifting is, frankly, astounding."
Here's another fact many might find surprising: Cindy McCain, an heiress to a multimillion-dollar fortune, has had a passion for racing nearly her entire life. Her father, the late James Hensley, was known for founding one of the largest Anheuser-Busch distributors in the United States. But he also loved cars and first took McCain, raised as an only child, to the Indy 500 when she was about 12 years old. That inspired her in high school, when she took a class in auto mechanics and regularly attended drag races with friends.
"I'm a gearhead," McCain said with a smile in an interview last month in Phoenix.
McCain's love of sports carried into adulthood. In 1986, six years after marrying John McCain, she got a pilot's license and bought a small plane so she could fly him around Arizona in his first U.S. Senate race, which ended in victory. She owns a small percentage of the Arizona Diamondbacks, finished a half-marathon in 2005, regularly attends NASCAR races, and participates in water sports with her husband, who is 72, and the four children they have together.
"She has a spirit that's very difficult to keep down, and she's always looking for something new to do, something new to get into," said Jack, who generally doesn't speak to the media but recently granted "E:60" an exclusive interview. "And whatever it is, she always excels at it."
Cindy McCain suffered a stroke in April 2004. After she left the Barrow Neurological Institute at St. Joseph's Hospital in Phoenix, she began a course of physical therapy.
And what does John McCain think of his wife's passion for racing? "Oh, he loves it," Cindy McCain said. The McCain campaign, however, did not make the senator available for an interview.
In April 2004, just one day after returning home to Arizona after one of her many trips to Japan to drift with Jack, Cindy McCain's spirit was put to the test. She collapsed while having lunch with friends and couldn't talk or walk. At the age of 49, McCain had suffered a mild stroke and was hospitalized for four days.
Six weeks later, McCain was still limited physically and, she said, mired in depression. Jack knew exactly what type of therapy was needed. As a 50th-birthday gift, he bought her a four-day course to the Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving in Chandler, Ariz.
Driving? Six weeks after a stroke? McCain thought the idea was crazy.
"I don't think I can do this," she recalls telling Jack. "And he said, 'Mom, yes you can.'"
The course was called Executive Protection. Students learned to ram parked cars, perform 180-degree spins and handle perilous situations such as drive-by shootings and hijackings.
For McCain, the course offered all that and more. It helped restore her confidence and improve certain skills, such as coordination and concentration.
"I remember her wanting to build up that driving skill set again," said Danny Bullock, her instructor at Bondurant. "I think she was a little nervous that she wouldn't be able to react in time with the car if she needed to make a turn." He added: "She did exceptionally well."
In fact, McCain did so well that, a year later, in May 2005, she returned to Bondurant to hone her drifting skills. She and Jack then rebuilt a Nissan 240SX, installing a tricked-out engine and other parts conducive to drifting (the car is not street-legal). They even competed in amateur drift competitions in the U.S. as a mother-son tandem, finishing as high as second place.
...
"We are kind of a hybrid between action sports and motorsports because drifting is the only motor sport in the world that's actually subjective," said Ryan Sage, a co-founder of Formula Drift. "It's not how you get from Point A to Point B, which most motorsport fans find difficult to swallow at first."
...
By all accounts, the best way for racing fans to explore drifting is to take lessons, then enter amateur competitions. McCain has done both. But what would happen if a drifter suddenly found herself living in the White House as first lady? Would she be able to maintain her penchant for drifting? It's a scenario most aficionados of the sport never imagined possible.
"Camp David's got a lot of space," McCain said, laughing. "The only thing I can say is that if we are lucky enough to be able to represent the United States of America, I'll do it the best I can. And I also want to have some fun, too."
Source: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/e60/news/story?id=3571491
Wife is a drifter and he's considering putting Democrats in his cabinet.. More points in the plus column for being a legitimate individual and not a thesaurus in a suit.
Looks kind of cool, McCain thought to herself, but how'd they do that?
For most people, the curiosity probably would have ended there. But McCain, the wife of the Republican nominee for president, Sen. John McCain, is anything but ordinary. Although a wide swath of the public views her as reserved and distant, she is actually quite the opposite in private. When Cindy McCain, 54, encounters something that intrigues her, she embraces it with the zeal of a toddler on Christmas Eve.
And so McCain began to learn as much as possible about this mysterious driving technique. It turned out it was called drifting and had origins tracing back to the mountains of central Japan in the early 1990s. Months after first seeing drifting on television, McCain traveled to Japan with Jack, now a senior at the Naval Academy and an avid fan of motorsports, to take drifting lessons with a top instructor.
"I love it," McCain said, though she described herself as a below-average drifter. "I'm probably a little too cautious with it because it is abnormal from what you're taught when you're taught to drive. You're taught to keep control of your car. Everything you were taught in driver's ed, forget. That's what drifting is about."
...
In an exclusive interview with E:60's Lisa Salters, Cindy McCain credits her son, Jack, with helping her to recover from a stroke in 2004 by pushing her to drive race cars.
Some drifters employ the emergency brake; others rely more on the clutch. But every method requires lots of practice, not to mention a modicum of chutzpah.
When told that McCain was into drifting, Gardiner was speechless for a few moments. "It's... absolutely... incredulous," he said. "If you look at Sen. McCain, he looks like the archetypal grandfather. And to find out that his missus is into drifting is, frankly, astounding."
Here's another fact many might find surprising: Cindy McCain, an heiress to a multimillion-dollar fortune, has had a passion for racing nearly her entire life. Her father, the late James Hensley, was known for founding one of the largest Anheuser-Busch distributors in the United States. But he also loved cars and first took McCain, raised as an only child, to the Indy 500 when she was about 12 years old. That inspired her in high school, when she took a class in auto mechanics and regularly attended drag races with friends.
"I'm a gearhead," McCain said with a smile in an interview last month in Phoenix.
McCain's love of sports carried into adulthood. In 1986, six years after marrying John McCain, she got a pilot's license and bought a small plane so she could fly him around Arizona in his first U.S. Senate race, which ended in victory. She owns a small percentage of the Arizona Diamondbacks, finished a half-marathon in 2005, regularly attends NASCAR races, and participates in water sports with her husband, who is 72, and the four children they have together.
"She has a spirit that's very difficult to keep down, and she's always looking for something new to do, something new to get into," said Jack, who generally doesn't speak to the media but recently granted "E:60" an exclusive interview. "And whatever it is, she always excels at it."
Cindy McCain suffered a stroke in April 2004. After she left the Barrow Neurological Institute at St. Joseph's Hospital in Phoenix, she began a course of physical therapy.
And what does John McCain think of his wife's passion for racing? "Oh, he loves it," Cindy McCain said. The McCain campaign, however, did not make the senator available for an interview.
In April 2004, just one day after returning home to Arizona after one of her many trips to Japan to drift with Jack, Cindy McCain's spirit was put to the test. She collapsed while having lunch with friends and couldn't talk or walk. At the age of 49, McCain had suffered a mild stroke and was hospitalized for four days.
Six weeks later, McCain was still limited physically and, she said, mired in depression. Jack knew exactly what type of therapy was needed. As a 50th-birthday gift, he bought her a four-day course to the Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving in Chandler, Ariz.
Driving? Six weeks after a stroke? McCain thought the idea was crazy.
"I don't think I can do this," she recalls telling Jack. "And he said, 'Mom, yes you can.'"
The course was called Executive Protection. Students learned to ram parked cars, perform 180-degree spins and handle perilous situations such as drive-by shootings and hijackings.
For McCain, the course offered all that and more. It helped restore her confidence and improve certain skills, such as coordination and concentration.
"I remember her wanting to build up that driving skill set again," said Danny Bullock, her instructor at Bondurant. "I think she was a little nervous that she wouldn't be able to react in time with the car if she needed to make a turn." He added: "She did exceptionally well."
In fact, McCain did so well that, a year later, in May 2005, she returned to Bondurant to hone her drifting skills. She and Jack then rebuilt a Nissan 240SX, installing a tricked-out engine and other parts conducive to drifting (the car is not street-legal). They even competed in amateur drift competitions in the U.S. as a mother-son tandem, finishing as high as second place.
...
"We are kind of a hybrid between action sports and motorsports because drifting is the only motor sport in the world that's actually subjective," said Ryan Sage, a co-founder of Formula Drift. "It's not how you get from Point A to Point B, which most motorsport fans find difficult to swallow at first."
...
By all accounts, the best way for racing fans to explore drifting is to take lessons, then enter amateur competitions. McCain has done both. But what would happen if a drifter suddenly found herself living in the White House as first lady? Would she be able to maintain her penchant for drifting? It's a scenario most aficionados of the sport never imagined possible.
"Camp David's got a lot of space," McCain said, laughing. "The only thing I can say is that if we are lucky enough to be able to represent the United States of America, I'll do it the best I can. And I also want to have some fun, too."
Source: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/e60/news/story?id=3571491
Wife is a drifter and he's considering putting Democrats in his cabinet.. More points in the plus column for being a legitimate individual and not a thesaurus in a suit.