MOTOR RACING WINTERNATIONALS : A Lady Takes the Ultimate Ride

When followers of women’s sports talk about the greatest female athletes, the names usually mentioned are Babe Zaharias, Helen Wills, Martina Navratilova, Wilma Rudolph, Nancy Lopez and sometimes Janet Evans.

How about Shirley Muldowney?

All those others beat women. Muldowney beat men , some of them the very best in drag racing.

Could Babe Zaharias seriously have challenged Sam Snead? Could Wills or Navratilova have taken even a set from Jack Kramer or Boris Becker? Could Rudolph have run with Jesse Owens, Lopez matched shots with Jack Nicklaus or Evans swum competitively with Mark Spitz?

Muldowney not only raced and defeated such men as Don (Big Daddy) Garlits, Joe Amato, Darrell Gwynn, Connie Kalitta and Gene Beck, she often dominated them. She won three National Hot Rod Assn. world top-fuel championships and 18 national events in a career that started in 1958 at Fonda Raceway, a tiny track in northern New York.

Muldowney is at the Pomona Fairplex this weekend with Rahn Tobler, her husband-crew chief, and her long, sleek, pink dragster that can carry her a quarter-mile in less than five seconds.

It may be her final stand. But she hopes not.

The Winternationals, which she won in 1980 and 1983, will be her only appearance this year. She hopes it will provide a showcase to stimulate sponsor interest for 1992. She will turn 51 on June 19, but her passion to drive is as deep as it was when she was 21.

“Two days after the Winston Finals (in late October), we were told we were not going to be a part of Larry Minor’s 1991 program,” Muldowney said. “It was too late to make any plans of our own, but we had this perfectly good car at home in the garage in Northridge, so we decided to take it to Pomona and then call it quits for the year and try to regroup.”

There is no bitterness toward Minor, she said.

“It was strictly a business deal. The man spent over a million dollars on our program last year, and he said he couldn’t justify the costs. We started the year out pretty solid, but we never really got going. He treated us fine. He just didn’t have a place for us this year.”

Tobler serviced and Muldowney drove Minor’s car--not their own--last year. She qualified at 4.975 seconds (elapsed time) in the Arizona Nationals, the second event of the year, but after that she never got past the second round in any event and wound up 10th in the Winston standings.

“We sold our truck and trailer because we were using Minor’s last year, and we lost our crew when we didn’t have a program for this year, so we’re running this week with a volunteer crew and a rig we borrowed from Minor,” she said. “We don’t have a dime in sponsorship money. Most of the (sponsorship) deals are done in July and August, and it was November when we got cut. This year is shot.

“If we hadn’t had our car at home, and it hadn’t run so strong at the end of 1989, we wouldn’t even be at Pomona, but Rahn said, ‘Let’s give it one more shot.’ ”

The car, 292 inches long, has only two words on its sides: Shirley Muldowney.

In 1989, it was the fastest qualifier at three of the last four NHRA events and brought Muldowney her first victory after her horrifying crash at Montreal in June of 1984. She also became the first woman to join the exclusive Cragar 4-Second Club when she ran 4.974 seconds at the Keystone Nationals in Reading, Pa., the world record at the time.

“We dropped it off the truck the day after the (1989) Winston Finals and didn’t touch a thing until last November,” Tobler said. “The way I look at it, that car doesn’t know it’s a year older. It’s still state of the art.”

Muldowney smoked the tires in her qualifying attempt Thursday, but she has three more opportunities to make the 16-car field for Sunday’s eliminations--today at 2 p.m. and Saturday at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m.

After Sunday, Muldowney will go to Indianapolis where orthopedic surgeon Terry Trammell will operate--for the sixth time--on her left foot, which was mangled when her car crashed into a muddy ditch at 247 m.p.h. during qualifying for the 1984 Molson Grandnational.

“Dr. Trammell is going to fuse some more joints to try and eliminate the pain,” she said. “It hurts all the time. This should be the last surgery, but we thought that when he fused it the last time.

“I’m looking forward to the trip. We’re driving back, so we can take Skippy (her dog) and enjoy ourselves. After the operation, we’ll spend a couple of weeks in Michigan (at her home in Mt. Clemens) and then come back in time for the Long Beach Grand Prix, when Dr. Trammell will be in town and he’ll take the cast off then.

“It will be sort of a delayed honeymoon for Rahn and me. We’ve been working just about every day since we were married (on Feb. 14, 1988).”

“In the meantime, Rahn and I will be looking for a sponsor, and if we land one, we’ll start work on our 1992 program. It wouldn’t make sense to run on our own money. In the first place, we couldn’t. It costs about $750,000 to run the full NHRA season, and that doesn’t include our car or a truck-and-trailer rig.”

“I don’t plan to see a single race,” she said of her hiatus. “I’m not a good spectator when I’m not racing myself. I’m not thrilled that I’m not going to be there, but there was nothing we could do about it this year. I’m disappointed and, yes, a little depressed at not having any sponsor at this stage in my career.

“We’ve paid our dues and we’ve fought and scratched for what we got. I’d like to think that someone in the drag racing family would reach out and help us. I hope someone does because I desperately want to race again. It comes down to the fact that, to me, it’s the ultimate, ultimate ride. I love it.”

Winternationals Notes

Joe Amato, defending world top-fuel champion from Old Forge, Pa., ran 4.976 seconds in the opening round of qualifying Thursday to break the 4.983 by Gene Snow in 1989. . . . Jim White of Tulsa drove his Dodge Daytona funny car to a top speed of 281.73 m.p.h., bettering the 279.85 by Mike Dunn in 1989.