Freda Wood Toups
August 4, 2009
Clara Arabie Hoskins
August 6, 2009
Most people don’t get to fulfill their life dream once.
Bayou L’Ourse drag bike racer Lance Jenkins has been fortunate enough to do it twice.
This time around, the 35-year-old, two-time national champion is doing something no one has ever done before – compete in professional motorsports with only one arm.
Jenkins lost his right arm while qualifying for a drag bike event in April 2005.
“I heard so many negatives. ‘That kid is done. He’s never coming back,'” Jenkins recalled.
With the help of his specially-built prosthetic arm, he won the American Motorcycle Racing Association (AMRA) regional All Harley Drags in Holly Springs, Miss. on July 26. The victory places him second in the modified class standings.
“Everyone in the stands was on their feet every time I came to the starting line,” Jenkins said. “Expectations were, ‘Is he really back?’ Even those people who doubted me are saying, ‘He’s picked up right where he was before the crash.'”
But Jenkins is interested in more than just winning races and proving doubters wrong.
He is in the final stages of launching the Lend-A-Limb Foundation to help children with missing extremities obtain prosthetics and achieve their goals.
“No one is helping children that need prosthetics,” Jenkins explained. “I was able to come back and relive my dream. Why can’t I help a kid who is just like me to live his dream?”
Jenkins races for two teams: Amelia-based Fas CoonAss Racing, owned by Top Fuel class competitor Randal Andras and his wife Paula, and Beecher, Ill.-based Valley Racing.
He said racing is in his blood. It’s the only thing he ever really wanted to do.
“At 200 miles an hour, it’s so relaxing to me,” Jenkins explained. “It would be like fishing to other people.”
Jenkins followed in the footsteps of his father, Randy, a former world champion motorcycle racer. He began racing 50 cc dirt bikes at age three. By 11, he had won two amateur national championships. At 15, he turned professional in dirt bike racing.
In 1999, Jenkins broke both of his wrists at the Pro Amateur Nationals in Tyler, Texas.
“If I had not messed up my wrists, I probably would have gone into the freestyle motocross or the X Games,” he said, referring to the popular ESPN competition.
After seven months with his wrists in casts, he began racing go-karts for Houma-based RP Motorsports, owned by Ronnie Picou. He won two state championships.
In 2003, he got into drag bike racing, riding for Harley Davidson of Baton Rouge and Lott Racing. That first year, he was named Racer of the Year and crowned national champion in the super stock class. He repeated as national champion in 2004.
On April 16, 2005, Jenkins was in the qualifying races of the Pennington Seed Nationals at Silver Dollar Raceway in Reynolds, Ga. During one of his runs, the motorcycle malfunctioned.
“(The bike) jumped up on its front wheel and started violently shaking and went to the left,” Jenkins recalls. “It came down sideways and threw my feet over my head and jerked (my left) hand off the handlebar like a handstand. I couldn’t let go of the motorcycle. I reached down and pulled my kill cord and when I did, POW! All that force stopped instantly. It pulled my arm off at the elbow.”
The fall threw Jenkins face first on to the track and broke his jaw. He also slid several feet on his face and back until his ankle hit a guardrail support, breaking his leg.
“I flipped my visor up and saw my bike was all destroyed and I was like, ‘Wow, I crashed really bad,'” Jenkins recalled. “I told myself to just breathe. I’ve crashed a bunch. I checked myself to make sure my ribs didn’t hit my heart or lungs. I said, ‘Damn, I just broke my arm and my leg. I’m going to be alright.'”
Jenkins was far from alright. He didn’t realize his right arm had been severed or that his fibula was broken and pierced through his leather racing boots.
Doctors at the Medical Center of Central Georgia inserted rods and pins from Jenkins’ hip to his ankle and a plastic kneecap to stabilize his leg. They amputated his right arm above the elbow.
Remarkably, Jenkins spent only five days in the hospital. Confined to a wheelchair, he appeared at the next drag bike race the following week.
Jenkins would spend a year in the wheelchair. He remembers that time as the darkest period of his life.
“I lost basically everything. I lost my house,” he said. “My girlfriend took my child (Jett, 7). I had to move and live with my grandmother in Vidalia.
“When I was in the wheelchair, I called every prosthetic company in America to try to get them to help me and no one would help me,” he added.
Through a friend of his doctor, Jenkins got in contact with Jay Tew, a certified prosthetist at Hanger Prosthetics & Orthotics in Baton Rouge and a motorcycle enthusiast.
The first prosthetic arm Tew constructed three years ago was inflexible and built only for racing.
The model Jenkins currently uses is made of acrylic carbon fiber. It flexes at the wrists and can be used for everyday purposes. A microchip uses electrical pulses from his muscles to open and close the grip.
“He has a gripper modified terminal device that is made to fit around cylindrical objects such as the throttle of a motorcycle,” Tew said. “Once he throttles down and gets the RPMs where he needs it to be, he shoots out and the rest is all Lance.”
Tew has to adjust the prosthetic arm every time Jenkins makes changes to his 300 horsepower motorcycle. For example, Jenkins changed the brake and clutch on the left side so he can do both with one hand.
“We’re breaking new ground,” said Jenkins. “We’re in a world of our own, because no one is doing this type of research.”
In 2007, Jenkins got a call from Randal Andras asking if he was ready to compete again. While Jenkins was itching to get back on the track, Paula Andras needed some convincing.
“I was like his momma. I told him, ‘You’re not getting back on that track until you ride in front of (my) house so that I can see you’re ready,'” she insisted. “We have a lot of trust in Lance. He wants to do this and we’re going to support his desire to race.”
Jenkins had to overcome more than a year of rust before he got back on the track.
The first time he rode a large engine motorcycle, he went 100 miles per hour three times and was exhausted.
To get back into shape, Jenkins turned to a childhood passion he had abandoned to pursue racing: gymnastics.
The former student of famed gymnastics coach Béla Károlyi used a trampoline and other gymnastics exercises to get himself ready to pass his physical.
He also had to re-qualify for his National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) license to be able to compete in various racing circuits.
Ironically, his first national race was back at Silver Dollar Raceway where his accident occurred.
“Paula and Randall and everybody were like, ‘Are you sure you’re ready for this?'” he recalled. “I said. ‘If I can’t do this, I don’t need to race anymore.’ I got back in the same left lane I crashed in. I had to look down the track for 20 minutes before I was like, ‘Okay, I got this.'”
He came in second place at that event.
Since his comeback, Jenkins won one event in 2008 and with his victory at Holly Springs last month, he is ranked No. 2 in AMRA’s modified class.
His determination to overcome adversity has won him new fans, including his fiancée Amber Duval, who is five months pregnant.
“I was really scared the first time I watched him race, but I have no reason to be afraid,” she insisted. “He’s an amazing racer. He’s relieved my nervousness.
“He does anything a person with two arms would do,” she added. “He washes dishes, sweeps the floor. He doesn’t let one missing arm stop him. He’s really amazing. I don’t think there’s anything he can’t do.”
Jenkins is moving forward with his Lend-A-Limb Foundation like he does on a motorcycle – fast and full of passion.
“The goal is not about me coming back to racing. That’s just what it takes to get people’s attention,” he said. “The real purpose is to help some children who are not as fortunate as I am. You don’t just keep blessings. You share them. God blessed me with the talent and the mindset to come back and do it. Now I want to share it with my friends, family, strangers, people in need.”
For the man who has been dubbed “Lance One Arm-Strong,” he hopes he can create a movement for children’s prosthetic research and development like the seven-time Tour de France winner has done for cancer.
“I’d love to meet Lance Armstrong and get him onboard,” he said. “We both race bikes, we’re both named Lance. But I’m One Arm-Strong and my bike is faster than his.”
A weekend benefit for the Lend-A-Limb Foundation will be held at No Problem Raceway in Belle Rose from Nov. 6-8.
To contribute to the foundation, send checks to: Rolling Stones Promotions, c/o Lend-A-Limb Foundation, P.O. Box 1746, Amelia, LA 70340. Donors can also call Paula Andras at (985) 637-0035 or (985) 397-7536
Professional drag bike racer Lance Jenkins preps this 1,700 cc Harley Davidson motorcycle. Below, the Bayou L’Ourse resident competes by using a specially-built carbon fiber prosthetic arm, which fits around the motorcycle’s throttle. * Photo by KEYON K. JEFF
