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Friday, July 3, 2009
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'Monster' Mike back on the track
By NATHAN BROWN Sports Writer Gritting his teeth and fighting his way through the agonizing pain caused by the broken tibia and fibula in his left leg, "Monster" Mike Schultz took his wife Sara's hand, looked in her face, and said, "Sara, I'm never racing again."
That was six months ago, following an accident that ultimately resulted in Mike's left leg being amputated inches above the knee and threatened to end his successful career prematurely during a qualifying race at Ironwood, Mich.
"At that point I just didn't think that six months later we would be where we are today," Sara Schultz said. "It really just makes you appreciate every little thing."
Thanks to sheer determination, the support of his wife, and help from the community and local businesses like Prosthetic Laboratories, Brothers Motorsports, Fox Racing Shox and L&M Steel, Mike has returned to motocross racing at the Race Freex track on Highway 371 south of Brainerd. He is a few weeks away from returning to the national racing scene.
"I still can't thank everybody enough," Mike said. "It has allowed for me to do what I'm doing now."
Mike has been racing motocross since he was 15 and has always looked forward to jumping on the dirt bike once the snow melted and the ground dried up enough.
"Every spring I always looked forward to it," he said. "When the accident happened I was like, 'Man I'm going to have to get rid of my dirt bike. I'm not going to be able to shift with it because I can't balance off my foot.'"
But the competitive nature and goal-oriented nature that drives Mike wouldn't allow him to give up so easily, and he began troubleshooting his way back to competitive racing. Mike quickly hit the drawing boards and began designing a prosthetic knee that could take the abuse of action sports.
"I wanted to build my own," Mike said. "I know what it needed to do to make me function as close to what I did before. So I just figured out what it needed to do and built it around that."
Those needs constituted putting in a variable tensioner and a mountain bike shock made by Fox Racing to absorb the jarring caused by racing.
"(Fox Racing) has a shop just south of town and they let me use their facilities, their machines, and helped me out with whatever I needed," Mike said. "They've been super helpful with getting everything set up."
The prosthetic knee, which Mike is working on patenting, wasn't the only modification he had to make to return to doing what he loves. Mike has installed an electric shifter and a special footpeg onto his 2006 Yamaha 450. The electric shifter, mounted on the left side of the handlebars, has two buttons linked to a solenoid that controls the shifter and allows Mike to shift with ease.
The footpeg, of Mike's design, is made to rock back-and-forth to keep his foot completely on the peg at all times and has a special hook to keep him from coming off the bike on jumps.
But Mike didn't wait to get his knee developed or the modifications on his bike to return to taking jumps on his snowmobile. Within a month of the accident Mike was taking practice laps and making jumps, even before he received his every-day prosthetic leg.
"I looked at it like this, the longer I wait, the harder it's going to get," he said.
Mike certainly isn't waiting long to make his comeback as he will return to competitive racing in the Extremity Games in Michigan July 11 before attending the Summer X Games in Los Angeles starting July 31.
Not surprisingly, Mike's goals for the events are high.
"The goal is to win," he said. "I've been training for it every day since I figured out I was going out there, but in the end it's all about recovering from a devastating injury and getting back on it right away. I mean, that is the biggest accomplishment. That means more than a gold medal."
With his upcoming return, Mike is once again faced with a decision he made 10 years ago - is the risk worth it?
"It was in the back of my mind that something like this could happen," he said. "So I don't regret for one second racing or choosing the career that I have."
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