Oct. 1, 2005. 01:00 AM
F1 racer's death in 1974 inspired a life-saving decision
NORRIS MCDONALD (Toronto Syar) www.thestar.com
They say in life that when one door closes, another opens. When the
subject of
Dr. Hugh Scully and the advancement of motors****t medicine in Canada comes
up,
that adage is never truer.
Scully - whose life and accomplishments could just about fill this section
of
the newspaper - was president of the Ontario Race Physicians in September,
1974
(a group he founded in the late 1960s), and on duty at Mos****t for the
Grand
Prix of Canada, when he struck up a friend****p with Helmut Koinigg, a
26-year-old Austrian s****ts-car driver making his first start in Formula
One.
"We hit it off,'' Scully said recently during an interview at Toronto
General
Hospital, where he is senior staff surgeon.
"Helmut came to Toronto and stayed with us for a few days after the
Mos****t
race (where he finished 10th in a Surtees-Cosworth) and he then invited us
to
attend the U.S. Grand Prix at Watkins Glen as his guest the following
weekend.
We agreed to go.''
On Oct. 6, exactly two weeks after the Canadian GP and nine laps into the
U.S.
race, Helmut Koinigg lost control of his car and crashed into a guardrail.
He
was killed instantly. It was a defining moment in the young life of Dr.
Hugh
Scully, who was 33 at the time.
"I had to identify Helmut (for the coroner)," he said. "I had to telephone
his
wife in Europe. I had to comfort John Surtees (who withdrew his team's
second
car from the race on hearing the news) while trying to handle my own
emotional
distress. I'd been involved in a couple of motors****t fatalities before
that
but never on a personal level. I was pretty shaken up."
So Scully got into his car and went for a drive to clear his head and to
do
some serious thinking.
"I can remember driving around the Finger Lakes (N.Y.) region for a couple
of
hours afterward, thinking: `Okay, Scully, what are you going to do? Are
you
going to walk away from this and forget about it? Or are you going to stay
and
do something?' I decided to commit - to try to make a difference."
Since then, through his friend****ps and professional associations with,
among
others, Dr. Sid Watkins (chief medical delegate for the Fédération
Internationale de l'Automobile, whose s****ting body oversees Formula One),
Dr.
Steve Olvey (former director of medical affairs for the old CART Indy-car
series) and Dr. Terry Trammell (medical director for the Indy Racing
League),
Scully has done just that.
As president of the International Council of Motors****t Sciences, he has
been
at the forefront of changes and improvements - helmets, restraint systems,
race
car design and so on - that have seen a top international racing driver's
chances of survival improve from about one fatality in six major accidents
in
the 1960s to about one in 365 today.
And the ongoing research being conducted into probably the most im****tant
area
of driver safety - helmet design - has major implications not only for
racers
but for children riding their bicycles.
But first things first. Who is Hugh Scully and how did he get to where he
is
today: an internationally recognized surgeon at Toronto General, professor
of
surgery at the University of Toronto, past president of both the Ontario
and
Canadian Medical associations and medical director of the Molson Indy
Toronto
and the West Edmonton Mall Champ Car Grand Prix?
Married to Vanessa Harwood, former prima ballerina of the National Ballet
of
Canada who he met on a blind date, and father of three girls - Laura Anne,
Alexa Jane and Shannon Harwood - Scully was born in Windsor. He got his
medical
training at Queen's University in Kingston and at the U of T.
His three summers working as a construction labourer in Labrador City to
help
pay his way through medical school toughened him up for some of the
battles
that lay ahead.
For instance, he founded the Professional Association of Interns and
Residents
of Ontario to try to improve the hours and working conditions for
apprentice
MDs. Hospital administrators were not amused.
He survived, however, and has been tilting at many more windmills ever
since.
As I like to do when tackling stories like these, I prefer to let the
subjects
speak for themselves. So, over to Dr. Scully.
How did you get started?
I first got into it around 1968 because I was interested in racing. Racing
is a
high-performance field and I'm in a high-performance specialty. A group of
us
in post-graduate training would go out to Mos****t. We were all on the
cutting
edge of trauma management and knew how to organize things so it was all
very
straightforward.
We formed the Ontario Race Physicians, which is still there and covers off
all
the races at Mos****t and Shannonville, and I headed that till '92. During
much
of that time, I was also the national medical adviser for the Canadian
Automobile S****t Clubs. Between 1981 and 1992, I represented Canada (and
the
U.S. by proxy - they didn't have anybody at that time) on the medical
commission of what was then called Fédération internationale du s****t
d'automobile. And from 1978 to '92, I was medical director of the F1 Grand
Prix
du Canada in Montreal. When the Molson Indy started in Toronto in 1986, I
was
asked to be medical director there and I've done that ever since.
When I was asked to do the Molson Indy, and I was still doing Montreal, I
had a
conversation with Bernie Ecclestone. He said, `Now you're going to have to
decide where your loyalties lie.' I said, `Bernie, my loyalties are with
the
drivers. I don't work for any particular organization. God knows, I don't
get
paid for it. If I meet my expenses, I'm lucky.' And he said, `Okay.'
Along the way, I met Sid Watkins, Trammell and Olvey. We've been friends
ever
since and we're all very involved in the Council of Motors****t Sciences.
Out of
one of our meetings came the HANS device (Head And Neck restraint System).
It
was described in detail and we pushed it on CART and the IRL.
Through Sid, it was accepted by Formula One and now it's mandatory in
virtually
every major racing series in the world, including NASCAR Nextel Cup. (Greg
Biffle credited it with saving his life last week when he crashed while
practising at Lowe's Motor Speedway.)
Some of the work going on now is in the management of concussions. A major
focus of the meeting coming up (in Rome in January 2006) will be on some
of the
new thinking about head injuries. There are implications for hockey and
football and even bike helmets here.
One of the things we've learned, for instance, is that kids' heads are
very
different than our adult heads, and so the helmet design is going to have
to be
different. That's something Steve Olvey is very involved in.
Who among the drivers has helped you the most?
Jackie Stewart, of course, and Nigel Mansell. Something not known about
Michael
Schumacher is his commitment to the safety commission. Michael pays more
attention to what's going on than anyone and I don't know if the other
drivers
know that. He comes to the meetings, for instance.
Michael right now is involved in a research project to determine what
happens
to the brain when a head is banged around. It's one thing to measure what
happens to the brain when the head moves forward and backwards and from
side to
side.
Research now is trying to measure the rotational forces that happen to the
brain. It's the rotational aspect that causes the most severe head
injuries. To
do this, we needed someone to wear an earpiece accelerometer to measure
those
forces. Michael was the first to volunteer.
He's a remarkable individual.
You conducted the press conference when Jeff Krosnoff and Gary Avrin were
killed in Toronto. You were in charge in Montreal when Riccardo Paletti
died
horribly. What was the worst for you?
Neither. Koinigg was the worst, because that was the turning point in my
life
and career.
Look, that doesn't mean that I'm not affected. Go along the second floor
of
this hospital where all the coronary care units and intensive care units
and
operating rooms are and there's a degree of anxiety and alarm and,
sometimes,
grief on the part of families and patients that's just phenomenal.
I can handle it in racing because I have to deal with it all the time in
my
profession. It's never easy; of course I have feelings.
Another view of Dr. Scully:
"One day at Mos****t, Hugh came up to me. He said, `Paul, you piss me off.
I
come to your races, I watch you work on your cars, I ask questions and
take an
interest and you know nothing about me and my life and my work. There has
to be
some parity here.'
"So I said, `Okay, what do you have in mind?'
"So he invites me to stand beside him at a quadruple bypass operation. I
lasted
about 45 minutes before I had to leave the room."
Paul Cooke, vice-president competition, ASN Canada FIA, Canada's national
motors****ts sanctioning body.
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