The Talladega Curse

50 Years of NASCAR Racing ~ Post 2

By Matt McLaughlin

Editor's note: This article is part of a special reprise of Matt McLaughlin's "50 Years of NASCAR Racing", written and published  in 1998 in commemoration of NASCAR 's 50th Anniversary celebration that year. In keeping with the RacersReunion mission of passing the history of our sport down to younger fans, Matt has kindly granted us permission to run the entire series. Please, sit back and enjoy as you take a journey back through the pages of history and perhaps relive a memory or two. Many thanks to Matt for his generosity in sharing. God bless you, my friend.

The truthfulness of the legend of the Talladega Curse is lost to time and memory but certainly there have been enough odd and tragic incidents at the track to give even a sober man pause. As the story is told there were a bunch of folks none too happy about Big Bill France's decision to build his race track on the property he had bought. Among them were local hunters who said it was the best fox hunting area in the world. But the legend goes on to say that a local Native American tribe considered the acreage the track would be built on sacred ground and the tribe sent their medicine man to ask France not to build there. France refused to relocate and as the story is told the medicine man invoked a curse on the new speedway. And no doubt was fined 5000 dollars by NASCAR for cursing, just like Todd and Rusty.

There was of course the infamous Professional Driver's Association boycott of the first race at Talladega which pretty much stunk up the show for the fans, but in relative terms that's far from the worst incident that took place at the track.