June 22, 2020

My blog today is a shout out to everyone to please say a few prayers for racer Alex Zanardi. He had a very bad accident hand cycling on Friday in Italy. He required several surgeries. Let's hope and pray that he can recover from this tragedy.

Alex Zanardi is one of the strongest people I have ever had the pleasure of photographing in and out of an Indy Car. He is strong physically and is not the kind of person to give up on anything.

After losing both of his legs and about 75% of his blood in a bad Indy Car crash in Germany in September of 2001, he came back to racing! He became very good at hand cycling to the point of winning an Olympic medal and several other races through the years.

Last year he competed in the 24 Hours of Daytona in a BMW that was modified for him with hand controls. He shared the BMW with two other drivers that used the pedals and a normal racing steering wheel.  They were very competitive in the race. The guys didn't win that day but just the fact that Alex was racing a car again was amazing.

So please keep Alex, or the Pineapple as some people have called him, in your thoughts and say a few prayers for him.

Wishing you a speedy recovery Pineapple! 

Thanks,

Rich Zimmermann