A teenage racer from Lindsay, Ont., is about to compete on one of many greatest phases in American stock-car racing — the newest milestone in a life already outlined by resilience.
Ollie Ferguson will race at Bowman Grey Stadium in North Carolina throughout NASCAR Conflict weekend. The 16-year-old might be compete within the “Cook dinner Out Conflict” race on Feb. 1.
The NASCAR Cup collection non-championship exhibition race is held earlier than the Daytona 500 season opener.
“It’s gonna be a cool expertise for everybody in Lindsay, I assume, to see the hometown boy go race within the States,” mentioned Ollie, a professional late-model driver.
Ollie has raced on the monitor in Salem-Winston earlier than, however not on this massive of a stage amid huge crowds and a nationally televised viewers.
“It’s going to be televised to hundreds of thousands of individuals, and I’m simply tremendous excited to be racing concurrently the NASCAR Cup Collection,” he mentioned.
“Being in the identical storage with them and chatting with them on the similar time, and getting ideas from actual Cup drivers. That’s going to be tremendous cool.”
He could have earned his driver’s licence only a month in the past, however Ollie has been racing since he was 9 years previous.
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However earlier than he was battling different drivers, he confronted an even bigger battle with myelodysplasia (MDS), a uncommon and life-threatening bone marrow most cancers.
Identified at age 4, he required a bone marrow transplant at Cincinnati Youngsters’s Hospital, together with his sister Scarlette serving as his donor.
That was adopted by two years of restoration and preventing via problems.
His father Rob launched his then nine-year-old son to junior late-model vehicles, which rapidly grew to become a ardour.
Ollie went on to win races on the junior degree, transferring onto full-size stock-cars at age 13 and racing towards adults within the Ontario Sportsman Collection. Two years in the past, Ollie earned the OSS’s “Most Promising New Expertise” award and the “Arduous Charger” title for passing essentially the most vehicles.
“I’m a reasonably proud dad,” mentioned Ferguson. “He has come a great distance in his life. He’s fought a number of battles — each on the monitor and off.”
Ferguson says Ollie competing at Bowman Grey might be a ‘surreal’ second for his or her household.
“Typically I simply can’t even consider that we went from just a little four-year-old child racing his NASCARs on a sofa who was too sick to have the ability to go exterior,” recalled Ferguson. “And now he’s strapping right into a sportsman at Bowman Grey Stadium within the madhouse traditional.
“It’s form of surreal, truly. To be sincere, I nonetheless can’t consider we’re doing it.”
Final week, Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes Brock MP Jamie Schmale introduced a certificates of well-wishes to Ollie, acknowledging the youth’s preventing spirit.
“It’s fairly essential to rejoice and acknowledge the accomplishments of this younger particular person reaching a lot so early in life,” mentioned Schmale. “And to achieve that scale, to be taking part at a monitor that’s received a lot historical past representing not solely our neighborhood, but additionally our nation, making us proud.”
Oillie says he’s thrilled to be one of some Canadians to race at Bowman Grey subsequent month, competing towards older, extra skilled drivers — all on a monitor he says leaves little room for error.
“Bowman Grey is simply its personal animal; prefer it’s a totally flat monitor, no banking, and it has just about no grip,” he mentioned.
And he’ll have loads of supporters and native sponsors cheering him on.
“Once I stroll via a crowd of individuals on the racetrack, they know who I’m,” mentioned Ollie. “And there’s little children who run as much as you and ask to your autograph or a hero card or a T-shirt or something. And it’s identical to, ‘that is tremendous cool.’ Such as you’re their superhero.
“It’s like how I used to think about, like, Kyle Busch as my superhero.”
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