It was a crazy, work-packed weekend for me. Saturday I drove to Ohio for the 25^th anniversary edition of the Lima Classic AMA Grand National. Personally, this is my second favorite Grand National behind Peoria. I know all the Springfield faithful out their will think I’m crazy, but I just love the skills required to ride well on a cushion track like Lima. There’s nothing like seeing riders in full-lock broadslides through Lima’s pea-gravel turns.

Anyway, I drove to Lima Saturday morning, covered the race then did my Cycle News posting and was back on the road to Indy by midnight. I arrived home at 3AM and set my alarm for 6AM to watch the World Superbike live scoring from Donington Park. I got the time difference wrong, I went back to bed for an extra hour when I found the first race wouldn’t start until 7AM.

Now here’s the craziest thing – I can’t watch WSBK, so I sit there staring at a scoring monitor to try to figure out what’s going on and text Mary Spies (Ben’s mom) to get details. Well this morning my brother called from Camp Salerno Forward Operating Base in Afghanistan. He’s a contractor there and they get WSBK on satellite from India!

So here’s my brother in Afghanistan calling me on his magicJack giving me play by play of the races. Turns out a bunch of the troops there are Spies fans and they all piled into my brother’s room to watch the races on his satellite TV and cheer on Ben.

During WSBK race two my brother yells “Haga crashed!” At first I was thinking about the championship implications and the opportunity for Spies to catch Haga in the championship. Then my brother described the replay. “Man that was bad. The bike chased him and pounded him. He’s got to be hurt pretty bad.”

So an hour later or so I’m talking to Ben on the phone (I do news releases for him). He’s just swept the weekend and basically is right back in the championship hunt, yet he’s not at all jovial on the phone, the exact opposite in fact. I thought about asking him why he sounded so down, but he had tons of press to talk to so I kept the conversation short.

A few minutes later I text Mary and told her Ben sounded unusually subdued. Mary called me right back and told me the reason – Ben was told of Haga’s crash and potentially serious injuries right before he talked to me. From what Mary told me the initial reports had Haga much worse off than what it actually turned out to be, so then Ben’s down mood made sense.

That’s one of the reason’s I like Ben Spies so much. Here he’s just had one of the biggest victories of his career and all he can think about is the condition of his rival (and friend) Nori Haga. Spies is truly a class act.

Here’s to a quick recovery for Haga. Spies wants to win the title, but I know he’d rather do it racing against Haga instead of winning while the hard-working veteran Haga sits on the sidelines.