Star Tribune's Secret Fan: Eve of Destruction at the Elko track

The first in the Star Tribune's 10-part series on taking in the fan experience at Twin Cities-area sporting events.

Last update: June 22, 2009 - 10:59 AM

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Editor's note: We sent various Star Tribune staff members out to different summer sporting events and asked them to write about the experience from the perspective of a fan. This is what the anonymous "Secret Fan" found:

My first visit to Elko Speedway was more about planning than pleasure, more logistics than leisure. Asked to cover my first event for this paper, I headed south on I-35 that June evening in 2001 thinking about word counts, deadlines and making a good impression on what I hoped would be my future employer.

Eight years later I returned to Elko, this time for the experience. And the evening's event, Eve of Destruction, did not disappoint. The high-octane variety show included monster trucks pulverizing rows of cars, a figure-8 race format that led to one T-bone collision and a motorcycle rider barrelling off a ramp, leaving his bike in midair and saddling back up moments before landing.

The rider never crashed and burned, which is more than can be said for the woman singing the national anthem. Not sure which was worse: forgetting a line or ignoring the melody. Thirsty fans might have missed the song altogether as speedway organizers either forgot or ignored the need to make all available beer windows open on a Saturday night in the summer time.

But all was forgiven when the spectator drag races got underway. The seriously cool concept, where fans race once around the high-banked, 3/8-mile paved oval track in the cars they drove to the speedway, provided fantastic moments.

Members of the crowd were not shy about their automaker allegiances. When two pickup trucks, one a Chevrolet and the other a Ford, pulled up to the line, the atmosphere became quite partisan. Most surprising were the generous amounts of support for the Honda Civic that won a few early races.

That Chevy-Ford truck race ended with the Chevy winning by inches -- the same distance by which the driver of the pristine 2006 Chrysler 300 missed the wall coming out of Turn 4.

A 1995 Camaro beat the 300 in a best-of-three finale, but as one fan said of the 300 driver: "He got a bunch of runs on a real track. How fun is that?"

Five Eve of Destruction events are scheduled for later this summer, meaning the family fun will continue. Kids and their folks sit together cheering, pointing, shrieking at the action. It is a shared experience because races are too loud for cell phone calls, and too much is going on to be typing text messages.