The Geriatrician: Interview with Dr. Steve Olvey

Grand Prix Masters may be all about seeing heroes from yesteryear racing wheel-to-wheel, but, behind the brand-new concept lies a lot of research, not least in the medical and physiological fields, for the consequences of cardiac arrest at 200 miles per hour are just too horrific to contemplate.

Steve Olvey may be a highly qualified medical specialist, but he is, first and foremost, a motorsport fan, with an interest going back to his childhood days in Indianapolis, where, at age six, he first became aware of his birth city's standing in the world of motor racing.

Five years later his father took him to see his first '500', and thereafter he was a regular in the stands until he spotted an advertisement on the local students' union bulletin board asking for medical students to volunteer for duty at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

His first job, he recalls, was "in a tent in the infield looking after people who had too much sunburn and too much alcohol". That was in his sophomore (second) year, but, no sooner qualified as MD, than 'Dr Steve' became Assistant Medical Director at the IMS, with his first on-track rescue being Graham Hill.

"I became assistant medical director at the speedway IMS as soon as I graduated from medical school and I became medical director of the United States Auto Club in 1975, and then when Championship Auto Racing Teams formed and split from USAC they asked me to be their medical director and I stayed in that position until 2003."

He dove-tailed his motorsport responsibilities with private practice activities, both in Indianapolis and, from 1991, in Florida, where he specialized in interim trauma medicine, with a sub-specialty in critical care medicine.

Today, 63-year old Olvey, who works full-time for the University of Miami, directs the neurosurgical intensive care unit at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, "which is the large trauma centre for most of South Florida".

Wife Lynne - they have three children and six grandchildren - is totally supportive of his passion for speed. And so she should be: her grandfather, Hershel McGee competed at Indianapolis ("According to the records he came eighth in one race between the wars") and was a barnstorming pilot between races.

Highly respected by all who have come into contact with him, Olvey has, according to former Grand Prix driver and Indianapolis 500 winner Eddie Cheever, "probably put humpty-dumpty together a few times", while Eliseo Salazar, who involuntarily consulted Olvey after crashing heavily at Indy's Turn 1 in 2002, states that "Steve understands the special medical requirements of racing drivers, understands that we want to get back to racing, and treats us accordingly."

DR: I believe you tended to both Emerson Fittipaldi and Nigel Mansell during their CART careers. Were they your conduit into Grand Prix Masters?

Olvey: "No, actually, Emerson told me they were planning this particular series, but I was working in my office in Florida when I received a call from Peter Joyce (GPM's Commercial Operations Director), who introduced himself and told me about the series.

"At first I was skeptical that it could really happen, but the more he talked to me and the more I thought about it, the more I thought it what an interesting idea. I got very intrigued with it, and agreed to become their chief medical officer."

DR: Is it a full-time position?

Olvey: "No, I still work full-time at the university in Florida, this is part-time, this is a diversion, but a very pleasant diversion. I use vacation time, to be honest, and if I go beyond vacation time then the university allows me to do this and they get compensated for it."

DR: When you worked at Indy and in CART, you were working with a lot younger drivers, were there major physiological differences?

Olvey: "There truly are, when you're young. Number one it's easier to get in shape; the shape you get in is of course better than an older person can achieve, but the surprising thing to many people is that with a lot of hard work, and a tremendous amount of courage and dedication, you can achieve within 90-95% of the abilities you have in your twenties, clear into your sixth decade, and even early into your seventh decade.

"There are definite changes that take place, although interestingly enough your ability to maintain muscular strength stays intact into your seventies, and you can build muscle through exercising and working out and so forth. The ligaments and tendons, however, become stiffer and less flexible. I think all of us who are older realize that we are not as quick and limber getting in and out of the family car, those kinds of things all change.

"Vision changes as you get older, cataracts can develop, depth perception becomes affected, sometimes visual acuity can deteriorate, but with modern medicine those things are correctable for the most part."

DR: What about reactions, and are shortcomings in this regard correctable?

Olvey: "Reaction time ... you can't maintain the reaction times you had when you were young, but you can stay not so far off as long as you continue to develop and to train to use your reactions, practicing hand-eye co-ordination, those kind of things. Working with computers, working with video games, staying active, those kinds of things will maintain your reflexes and reactions to within a large percentage of what they were at your peak.

"There's a definite pyramid, as you know, with racing drivers and all athletes. Many, many people practice for hours and hours to try to become a champion and only a handful are ever able to do that. So, by the time they reach the pinnacle of Formula One racing, a lot of people have been eliminated.

"Those drivers who were involved in Formula One obviously had attributes in the beginning that the average person or race driver didn't have, as a result they're going to be better off as they get older, and be ahead of the curve in their particular age groups, be ahead of the curve when they're in their late forties, fifties and sixties - which is the age group for the Grand Prix Masters series."

DR: Is it possible that certain drivers may age faster than others, so that a driver who was not particularly successful during his Grand Prix career can suddenly find himself extremely competitive in GPM against drivers who regularly beat him back then?

Olvey: "That's possible, every one ages at a different rate, no matter where you started. Obviously disease plays a role, if you're unfortunate to develop a chronic disease or rapidly progressing aging, then there is nothing you can do about that. But if you continue to be active and eat right and abstain from alcohol and drugs, you can pretty much maintain your original state of health provided you're not unfortunate enough to develop a chronic disease."

DR: GPM has a minimum age (of 45). Should it have an upper limit?

Olvey: "I've been asked that question before, and by some of the drivers, too. You can't set an absolute maximum age because, for example, there are now triathletes competing in the Iron Man who are in their nineties. I'll use a perfectly good example: Mario Andretti is in his late sixties, and I fully believe that, with a little bit of training - and it wouldn't take much because he stays in pretty good shape - I full believe he would be competitive in this series.

"It's not going to be too long before he is seventy years old. So I think it is conceivable to have a driver in this series at age 70, particularly as people are staying healthy longer."

DR: How do the G-forces affect GPM's more senior drivers?

Olvey: "It's interesting that tolerating G-forces is different to what seems logical, and we discovered this when we got into the G- situation at Texas World Speedway in CART (in 2001) where we actually had to cancel the race because of the effect of the G-forces on the drivers.

"It turns out that you tolerate G-forces better if you're overweight and in less good shape than if you're the epitome of an athlete. This for due to a lot of physiological things that we don't need to go into, but it's a fact that a slightly overweight individual and one who is a little better out of shape tends to tolerate high G-loads better than for example triathletes or Formula One drivers.

"This is what we discovered in Texas, where we had a bunch of drivers who were in top physical condition who were really bothered by the G-forces.

"The bad effect of the G-forces is that, as you get older, your ligaments and tendons are not as elastic, so to hold yourself in a position to combat the G-loads in a position you need to be in to drive correctly. It's going to be harder and harder, so these guys, at the end of a session, have a lot of soreness similar to that experienced after over-training or exercising when you've not exercised for a while.

"As a result of that, we (GPM) have a lot of trainers on board who tend to drivers immediately after a session, and the ones who require it receive massage therapy and so forth because of this. So far it's working and they feel good enough to go at it again the next day."

DR: And cardiovascular strains on older drivers?

Olvey: "Cardiovascularly, again, as long as they're doing cardio work-out and maintain cardio functions, and do not have significant heart disease, the G-loads are not an issue. To be honest, what I was most concerned about was vision, depth perception, that type of thing, but it turns out that with modern medicine, laser surgery and all the ways they do cataract surgery and so forth, this has turned out to be much better than I anticipated.

"Then, I think you need to add a couple (of beats) as you get older. It would be difficult to maintain your resting heart rate, you can't get down to your resting heart rate that you had when younger by being in better and better shape, that's not going to happen.

"The drivers are able to go roughly an American football field (120 yards/110 metres) a second (+200 mph/320 kph), and we went all through Kyalami (and all through the Qatari race) without a significant incident, and I think that is remarkable."

DR: Is age a factor when it comes to recovery from injury?

Olvey: "Recovery is going to be prolonged, there is no question about that, and I notified all the drivers (of that) before the season even started that you can't get over a fracture or an internal or head injury as quickly as in your youth, it is just physiologically not possible.

"One of the biggest worries is a closed head injury or concussion, because as you age your ability to recover from a significant head injury is less, but the drivers are aware of this as I informed them prior to the season as I said, and they are willing to take that risk.

"It's not a huge risk, as the cars are very safe and the rules are intended to maintain safe races and so forth, but that risk is there and it is increased because of age."

DR: What about the altitude of Kyalami or the heat of Qatar - do the drivers suffer more through age than, say, current Grand Prix drivers?

Olvey: "To a little bit of a degree, but it is really more to do with how acclimated they are (to the 1800m altitude of Kyalami or 48C heat in Qatar), so the smart drivers got here as early as they could. It takes five or six days to get acclimated, but it depends where you're from. If you're from Nova Scotia or northern Scotland, it will take longer than somebody coming from hotter climates, and I think the drivers need to be aware of that.

"Another issue is jet lag: as you get older, some people but not all, are more affected by jet lag, which means you have to come in the host country a little bit earlier. If you come in at the last minute, it's going to be tough."

DR: Do they have any special dietary requirements, when compared to current F1 drivers?

Olvey: "Dietary requirements, they're the same, yes: you want complex carbohydrates before the event, a light meal on the day of the event, then replacement fluids, electrolytes and carbohydrates and proteins after the event. That doesn't change with age.

"The only thing is that I am very pleasantly surprised because I did have some trepidation going into this as to how they were going to do. I've known Nigel and Emerson for a long time, and I know how good a shape they're in and how good a shape they keep themselves in, so I felt they could do it.

"But, to be honest, as a group, I'm surprised how little trouble we've had. In fact, I don't detect, I can almost say I don't detect any difference between these guys and when I worked with younger drivers in CART back in the eighties and nineties.

"They have a little more stiffness after competing, they have a little more aches and pains, but their abilities to drive and their laptimes are honestly within 5% of what they were in their prime."

DR: Have you seen any improvements in driver fitness since the first GPM race at Kyalami?

Olvey: "Absolutely. I think in South Africa we had five or six drivers who were near optimum; here (in Qatar) we have 11 or 12 who are optimally fit. I give a good example in Eddie Cheever: Eddie was little bit embarrassed by his performance in Kyalami, since then he has driven in 24 Hours of Daytona, has driven in two IRL races, he is racing in the (Indianapolis) 500 later this year.

"He has a trainer, has been weightlifting and bicycling, has a dietary programme, and he was highly competitive here this weekend. You can see the difference - the cars didn't change, so Eddie's obviously changed. (The American went on to finish fourth in the Grand Prix Masters of Qatar).

"I see it in some of the other drivers - they've got seriously motivated, and I think some of them are surprising themselves at how good a shape they can get in, but as you get older it takes longer, and it takes more effort to attain peak performance for your age than it did when they were younger."

DR: Have you needed to reject any drivers due to unfitness or physiological shortcomings?

Olvey: "Of the ones who wanted to race, there was only one who was unable to race (Olvey mentions no names for ethical reasons, but the facts point to 1980 World Champion Alan Jones) and that was more of a muscular skeletal reason than anything else. Nobody else."

DR: Are the medical checks for GPM any more stringent than they were in your days at CART?

Olvey: "Because they're all over 40 years of age they have all had to have pretty good cardiac stress test for pretty obvious reasons - if a baseball player has a cardiac arrest and falls down on the outfield nobody else is affected; if a driver has one at 180 miles an hour you endanger a lot of other people - so you do the best you can.

"The tests are not infallible, but the best you can do is try to eliminate that possibility, so it is a little more strict. Then there is a visual and a hearing requirement, but other than that the medical examination is identical to that in CART. Compared to that for a commercial pilot, I'm guessing, but I think ours is a little stricter."

With that, Steve Olvey is off to Friday evening dinner with Nigel Mansell. Of the race's fifteen starters on Saturday afternoon, 12 took the chequer in what has been billed the world's hottest-ever race: 48°C ambient temperatures, 58°C on-track, and a record 77°C in-car against a previously highest recording °of 68°C.

Seems Dr Steve's patients are in even better shape than he believed. And on that basis, Michael Schumacher could be around for the next 30 years...

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