Breaking Away for a Year : After Suffering Severed Arteries in Accident, Speedway’s Kelly Moran Returns in Style

Kelly Moran of Huntington Beach, who hopes to become the first American speedway rider to qualify for four world championships, has had a tumultuous year, indeed.

Last summer, Moran was close to making his fourth trip to the world championships when he walked through a plate-glass window in Poland and suffered severed arteries, which ended his season a week before the final world qualifying race in England.

During his seven-month recuperation, he rode a mountain bike 40 miles three or four times a week just to break up the boredom.

When he healed, Moran did not receive an invitation he had expected to compete in two American races last spring. So he bought a house and moved to England, a place where he said he had never wanted to settle.

Once he began competing in the 1987 British Speedway League season, however, Moran regained his form and his thirst for competition.

Tonight he will be among a field of 20 riders in the Nissan American Final in Long Beach Veterans Stadium. It’s the first qualifying round for Americans, leading to the 1987 World Final scheduled for September in Amsterdam. Racetime tonight is 8 o’clock.

Moran, who has finished fourth in each of his three previous world final races, has also qualified for the 1987 World Best Pairs championship and the 1987 World Long Track Championship. In the pairs championship, he’ll team with his brother, Shawn.

Such accomplishment seemed impossible after Moran’s trip to Poland last July in honor of Edward Jancarz’s farewell speedway meeting.

Jancarz, one of Poland’s most famous athletes, had qualified for three world championships. Racing organizers had invited many of the great riders for two days of racing in honor of his retirement.

After the first day of racing, Moran walked through the plate-glass door of his hotel room and severed an artery in his left arm. He lost four pints of blood in 10 minutes. Doctors said he likely would have died were it not for help from British rider Chris Morton.

“I walked through the door of my hotel room and turned back to say something to Morton,” Moran said. “I tripped and forgot there was a second door made of thin-plated glass. I walked right through the glass door and it shattered. When I pulled my arm back, I severed an artery and blood was gushing everywhere.”

Moran said he went into shock and lost consciousness. But Morton applied a tourniquet, and his wife phoned for an ambulance. Moran, who arrived at the hospital at 2 a.m. Sunday, didn’t regain consciousness until 6 a.m. Monday.

When he woke, he saw that his left arm was wrapped. Doctors scrubbed the wound and then placed a cast on his arm so that he could return to England.

In England, Moran required eight hours of surgery. Doctors found that several arteries had been shredded, and they shortened the damaged ones. Moran was told he would be unable to race for a year.

The next weekend, Moran could only watch as Sam Ermolenko qualified as the only American rider for the 1986 world championship. It would be seven months before he could return to the race track.

“It was hard sitting out with nothing to do,” Moran said. “I had a bad disposition. I was chewing on people for no reason. I was difficult to live with.

“The doctors gave me stretching exercises to do while I was recovering, but I was climbing the walls. That’s when I started riding a mountain bicycle. I was living with my grandmother in Long Beach, and whenever I got bored, I’d ride to Huntington Beach and back.

“I was riding 40 miles a day, usually three or four times a week. It was the only thing that kept me from going nuts.”

Moran rehabilitated his arm during the off-season and received a doctor’s release to return to racing in February. He eagerly anticipated an invitation to ride in the two-day Hawaiian Classic in Honolulu and planned to ride in the Spring Classic series in Southern California in March.

But Moran was not invited to ride in Hawaii.

“I was hurt that I didn’t get invited to ride in Hawaii, but rather than sit home and sulk, I decided to go to England early and get the bikes and equipment sorted out for this season,” he said. “There was nothing left for me here, so I left.”

Moran, who bought a home next door to Shawn in Sheffield, began preparing for the British Speedway League.

“I was so hungry to ride after the layoff,” he said. “In my first five meetings, I scored in double figures. So far, my worst meeting has been seven points (out of a possible 12). I’m gating (starting) better than I ever have in my life.”

Although Moran’s comeback has been surprising, his subtle change in attitude has been the most surprising thing to many who have known him for the past eight years.

Moran once hated living in England because of the food, weather and people. “I had to make myself like it over there,” he said.

Today, he enjoys living abroad. He says the change has come with age.

“I’m a little more mellow,” he said. “When I first went over there, I was 18 years old, and I was going crazy. I’ve settled down.

“I have a great English girlfriend. I do the gardening for Shawn’s house and my house. Most of the crazy things I did in the past came out of boredom. Now I’m enjoying myself.”

Much of the enjoyment comes from racing. He has ridden the speedway circuit across Europe.

One weekend, he rode in a league match at Bradford on a Saturday night, rode a qualifier for the Best Pairs in Norden, West Germany, on Sunday and then rode a long track qualifier on Monday in Mulmshorn, West Germany, the next day.

The Moran brothers won the semifinal of the Best Pairs championship and will attempt to become the first brothers to win the title next month in Pardubice, Czechoslovakia.

“We got to Norden an hour before the race, and it was raining and blowing,” he said. “Shawn had ridden there twice and I had only seen the track on video. We were fined 50 marks for showing up late, but won the meeting by eight points.

“We packed up and drove six hours to Mulmshorn for the long track. I had ridden only one long track meeting in my life, and we had only one bike prepared for both of us. I didn’t want to ride.”

Shawn Moran, the 1983 World Long Track champion, persuaded Kelly to compete. Kelly passed his brother and Chris Morton in his first heat race to win, then passed Egon Muller, three-time world champion, to win his next race.

“There wasn’t time to go back to the pit area between races, so we got three-minute holds (breaks) between races, fueled and oiled the bike, changed the tire and did it all in the infield. The fans loved it.

“I was winning the race until my last heat when the battery box finally went dead. I guess I like long track races, after all.”

The Morans returned to England on Monday night and then flew to Los Angeles on Tuesday. They skipped a scheduled practice session on Wednesday to sleep but will be among the favorites tonight on the banked, quarter-mile track, where riders will reach speeds of 80 miles per hour on the straightaways.

“I don’t feel I have anything to prove, I just want to go out and ride the best that I can and hopefully qualify for another world championship,” Moran said.

Speedway Notes

The top five finishers will advance to the Overseas Final on July 5 in Bradford. Each rider will compete in five, four-lap races with a rider scoring four points for a win, three points for second, two points for third and one point for a fourth-place finish. A perfect score is 20 points. . . . The racing format was changed from four to five-man heat races with the addition of Canadians Gary Ford and John Kehoe in the field. . . . Shawn Moran won the race last year despite riding with a broken right ankle. . . . Rick Miller, who rides for Coventry in the British Speedway League, had injured his ankle after crashing in Sweden’s Ullevi Stadium. But Miller is expected to ride tonight. . . . U.S. champion Bobby Schwartz will be the leading contender among local riders. Schwartz won an amazing 22 of 33 scratch main events on Southland tracks during the first nine weeks of the season. . . . Racing from Ascot Park’s South Bay Stadium will be televised weekly on ESPN beginning June 26 at 9:30 p.m. Former world champion Bruce Penhall and Larry Huffman will be the announcers. . . . The U.S. vs. the World series will begin July 30 with a short-course race at Ascot and conclude on Aug. 1 with a meeting on Ascot’s half-mile course.