Sure, winning races is difficult, as Bob Sikes Sr. can certainly attest to over the course of his 47-year career in the sport. However, his biggest win came away from the track. That victory was against cancer.
Seven years ago, he found out he had prostate cancer.
“They removed my prostate, but the cancer had already spread outside of it,” Sikes, of Eunice, New Mexico, said. “I had to go to the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and stay there for three months for radiation treatments — but I never missed a season of racing. I healed up and got right back to the track.”
The sport played a vital role in the recovery process.
“Racing helped me both mentally and physically to beat cancer,” said Sikes. “Mentally, I kept my mind on racing and not my medical treatments. All I thought about was racing and not having cancer. Physically, racing made me stronger after my treatment. It’s good exercise and it built up my muscles.”
Sikes particularly looks forward to going to the IMCA Speedway Motors Super Nationals at Boone Speedway in Iowa. The annual pilgrimage to the mecca of IMCA racing is a highlight of the year for Sikes.
“I raced there three times,” Sikes said of the IMCA Super Nationals. “I made some great friends. Now I go there for a week every year just to hang out with my friends and watch.”
Now 78 years old, he won his 84th IMCA modified victory last Saturday at Abilene Speedway in Texas. There, Sikes celebrated with his grandson Blake and his great-granddaughter Georgia.
With his hometown track of Cardinal Motor Speedway now closed, Sikes makes the 200-plus mile, three-hour, one-way trip to Abilene. While nothing comes easy for Bob Sikes Sr., when compared to fighting cancer, racing might be a cakewalk.
Mike Adaskaveg has written hundreds of stories since the website’s inception. This year marks his 54th year of covering auto racing. Adaskaveg got his start working for track photographer Lloyd Burnham at Connecticut’s Stafford Motor Speedway in 1970. Since then, he’s been a columnist, writer, and photographer, in racing and in mainstream media, for several outlets, including the Journal Inquirer, Boston Herald, Stock Car Racing, and Speedway Illustrated. Among Adaskaveg’s many awards are the 1992 Eastern Motorsport Press Association (EMPA) Ace Lane Photographer of the Year and the 2019 National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) George Cunningham Writer of the Year.
