Category Archives: authors and head injury

It was one day in the year 1961, whilst driving on the long journey home to Cape Town after the South African Grand Prix in East London (a city that lies on South Africa’s East Coast), that the young boy told his father that Jim Clark would one day be the champion driver of the world. The young boy was in a bad mood, because the young Clark had beaten his hero, Stirling Moss. And for the next few years the young South African boy followed the rising Scot star ’s ascending career with great interest and pride. So that the new “shooting star” eventually usurped the place of the now retired old hero, Moss after his near fatal accident at Goodwood, UK…until it too was tragically extinguished in a minor race at Hockenheim, Germany in 1968. And that night the young boy lay on his bed and read the race program over again and again… then he fell asleep and dreamt in peace. One day…

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HE WOULD NOT WAKE UP PROPERLY FOR 38 DAYS!

From: STIRLING MOSS: The Authorised Biography by Robert Edwards (Published by Cassell & Co, UK)

Stirling Moss was in a coma for 38 days in Atkinson Morley Hospital, London

And many people throughout the world prayed for the star driver’s healing… a collective appeal to Christ. Perhaps one of them was even a concerned young boy in Clovelly, Cape Town, South Africa.

Moss’s inability to speak was confusing, although the physical injuries were more familiar.

He did not immediately notice that he was effectively paralysed. The physical damage to the left side of his body was made worse by the fact he could not move it, the massive bruising his brain had received had to heal first. This would be frustrating to say the least, particularly since the extent of his injuries were not initially revealed to him. The patient assumed that he could not move because he was injured, rather than because his brain would simply not allow it. His friend, David Haynes finally revealed the truth; although it depressed Stirling, it also caused him to fight his condition harder, initially to no avail. Continue reading →