Less than a year has passed since the wreck, and Hmiel is upright. Ten months ago, he was locked up completely. Anderson tightens a black harness positioned around Hmiel's torso and underneath his thighs, which is then clipped into a pulley system with steel tethers that lift him perpendicular to the floor. He can then slide down a long horizontal steel beam held up by foot tall A-frame posts and use any number of training machines lined up in a row underneath the overhead beam.
Today, Anderson chooses an elliptical trainer. As the workout progresses, Hmiel offers Anderson detailed feedback about his body, much as he did when telling his crew chief how his race car handled, so adjustments can be made to improve performance.
His work with Anderson is multifaceted. There are no rules as to what she can try as long as his safety isn't compromised. His body is her puzzle. The main goal is to methodically re-educate Hmiel's brain to sync his mind with his muscles. She does this by manually stimulating his muscles with her hands, thereby assisting his body in internally recognizing what's moving how, and where.
Spatial awareness is critical. At times, he is unable to determine whether he is performing a movement voluntarily or Anderson's manipulation of his muscles generates progress. She works to strengthen his muscles through typical personal training techniques, such as weight training. They perform weight-bearing exercises, too, so Hmiel doesn't lose calcium in his bones and promote osteopenia, as well as range-of-motion exercises to sustain good circulation.
As the session nears completion, Hmiel is lying on his back with his knees in his face, and Anderson comments that she's sorry for making him uncomfortable. This ain't uncomfortable," he says. That was embarrassing as s Hmiel's buddy from high school Adam Colborne, who has walked alongside him through drugs and paralysis, quips, "At least you aren't lying now when you tell people your penis hangs out of your shorts.
All within earshot cackle. That Hmiel can laugh is telling. His attitude, once that of a punk kid, now fills every room he enters with grace and inspiration.
The misunderstood approach of his youth is long gone, replaced with tangible humility. You're left with your mind when you're alone, and your attitude takes a large toll. I'm inspired that he's come from where he was beforehand and been knocked down, to the level he's at, and able to have that drive and determination in him to get better.
Hmiel figured as of July he had 75 percent feeling in his body, and he was ecstatic that he's starting to feel his butt again. He mentions this openly to a man sitting on a stool in front of a squat rack working on grip strength. He is Jerome Davis, a rodeo legend from around these parts, a former world champion bull rider and, incidentally, Luke Perry's body-double in the movie "8 Seconds.
That's Jerome Davis! You must be Shane! I read all about you. A week later, Hmiel is at hand therapy, working on fine motor skills such as feeding himself and drinking and gripping.
Hand therapy is far more taxing on Hmiel than broader physical therapy. It is an exhausting mental challenge for his brain to talk to his hands and fingers. It is not unlike the difference between the challenges of racing versus the challenges of stick-and-ball sports. He started here in April and couldn't feed himself. The inability to do so, Hmiel says, was the only embarrassing part of paralysis. It isn't fair, he feels, for your dining mate to negotiate your meal and his or her own.
The other day, we put him in the passenger's seat of my truck and rode around. It was the first time he'd been in a car, not in his wheelchair. Then he reached over and rolled the window down. That was so cool. He experiences a breakthrough moment on this day at hand therapy.
His left hand is in Kleinhans' lap. She pulls his thumb up off his palm, and he must muster the strength to pull it back into place. He does so. The whole place erupts in cheers.
The last exercise in this hourlong session has Hmiel seated in front of a long silver lever with a black handle at the top. It is attached to a computer that calculates the pressure he generates in a second push-and-pull sprint. His right arm and hand are strong. It is his shifting arm. Fast-forward to June Doctors remain mystified by Hmiel's improvement. His physical therapist isn't certain he'll ever walk again unaided, but remains optimistic based on his body's overall strength increase.
He walked with assistance for the first time in mid-April , and as he rounded a corner in the hospital, a certain doctor stood there, facial expression that of a man who had seen a ghost. Months ago, that same doctor had told Hmiel flippantly that he'd never walk again -- as he exited the room with his back to his patient. Twenty months had passed since the accident, and Hmiel is talking substantial trash to his buddies at a Charlotte-area lunch table and reminding his girlfriend, Lindsay Cromer, that he is "the Tom Brady of quadriplegics.
As laughter fills the room, Hmiel pauses, then begins recounting the one-year anniversary of his accident. Hmiel was fielding a brand-new car with a brand-new engine for driver Levi Jones, and he told no one he was "upside-down" financially. Sixty cars showed up to claim it. So I wrote him a check that was only three-quarters good. It wasn't really a good check. But I knew if we could just make the feature, I could cover it.
That was on Thursday, Oct. While his team spent its entire Friday changing engines, Hmiel and Cromer snuck off to Belleville, Ill. After the injury, racing wasn't the end-all, be-all anymore. Life beckoned. On Saturday morning, they drove into St. Louis to attend a party before the evening's race. When they arrived back at the track, Hmiel was told Jones would have to start in the C-Main, a preliminary qualifying race that helps determine the field for the main event.
Jones performed well enough in that race and the next preliminary to qualify for the main event. He would start 16th. It was a stop-and-go night, but, by Lap 21, Jones was the leader. He would not look back. Redemption stood at the finish line.
Heartache was in the rearview. And as the clock struck midnight, Shane Hmiel sat in Victory Lane again, in a wheelchair this time, on the one-year anniversary of the accident that put him there. Irish Saunders called Steve Hmiel first. Steve said he would talk to Shane, but he made no promises. Shane sometimes has an old-school approach to the business side of racing: He writes a check on Friday with plans to win enough money on Saturday that the check clears on Monday.
Soon enough, Shane called Irish. He said one of his cars was stored near St. Louis, and that Eric was welcome to drive it. When Irish and Eric separately recounted what happened next, each broke into an impression of Shane, with his North Carolina drawl and distinctive cadence.
Drive down to St. Louis and get that car. Get it all set up. Meet me at the Chili Bowl. They had known each other, but barely, for decades. Now the two talk on the phone almost every day. They talk about racing and their sons and how to best take care of them, both now and in the future. They worry about their sons wasting away as wards of the state, or tucked away in the corner of some nursing home somewhere.
Our goal is to make sure that when we pass away, they either have a business in place, or a really nice job, or enough cash in the bank that they can live until they pass away. On Thursday evening, Jan. Eric, now 23, and Shane, now 35, maneuvered their wheelchairs between them. He headed to the track for hot laps. When he returned a few minutes later, he was frustrated. He wheeled his wheelchair away from the car. Shane wore a winter hat and a scarf; one lingering effect of his injury is that his body struggles to stay warm.
He drove toward Eric. They leaned across their chairs to be heard above the din. He left for another run and came back again. He loves to watch Eric drive. Over and over, Shane summed up his goals for his partnership with Eric with two words: Have fun.
The power of racing together, they believe, is bigger than results. To Shane and Eric and their dads, the Chili Bowl seemed like the start of something powerful, much deeper than the typical owner-driver relationship. The confluence of their stories is eerie: Two promising young motorsports stars from well-known families suffer paralyzing injuries, rebound from them, and team up.
Even the way they separately describe the changes they have undergone since their injuries is strikingly similar. Now my life has, to an extent, meaning. It humbled me. They had to lose racing in order to find out it was too important to them. Each knows he can help the other and by doing so, help himself.
He suffered minor brain damage and will have to undergo countless hours of rehab to overcome his current quadriplegic condition. Despite all the setbacks he has experienced, both self-inflicted and out of his control, Hmiel still has big plans. He may not be able to win an Indianapolis from behind the wheel, but he hopes to own a race team that can win the prestigious event. For all his vices, Hmiel became a better person through the adversity.
If he can use his experiences to help others, then his life will have been far from wasted. He developed further complications after surgery and at one point his parents were told he was minutes from death.
Hmiel has no memories of the crash or of the previous few days preceding it. His first memory following the crash is of flying to Shepherd Center, a spinal cord and brain rehabilitation facility in Atlanta, with his mother in mid-November Hmiel remained there until April before finally returning home.
Hmiel lives with his girlfriend of five years and his parents in North Carolina. He travels minutes each way five days a week for physical therapy sessions at Race to Walk in Mooresville, N.
He spends the other two days — and roughly six hours a week — in hand therapy 15 minutes from his home.
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