Jerry Carroll met Dale Earnhardt only once. And yes, he was intimidated.

        Carroll, the Kentucky Speedway chairman, met Earnhardt in August at Daytona Beach, Fla. Carroll was at NASCAR headquarters to accept NASCAR's offer of a Busch race for 2001, then was given a tour of the Daytona garage by driver/Kentucky Speedway consultant Darrell Waltrip.

        As it happened, some drivers were practicing that day. One was Earnhardt, a close friend of Waltrip's.

        “I was really nervous about meeting Dale Earnhardt, because he was a larg er-than-life figure,” Carroll said. “I'm thinking he's going to brush me off or say something negative. But he couldn't have been nicer to me.”

        Earnhardt knew of Carroll's speedway, which opened in June 2000.

        “He told me, "I heard about that Kentucky track. Keep up the good work,” Carroll said.

        Carroll was at the Daytona 500 on Feb.18 when Earnhardt was killed. But Carroll did not see the fatal crash, having departed early.

        “The feeling I had, talking to people, was that Earnhardt couldn't die,” Carroll said. “I've been around a lot of sports people, business people, and I've seen a lot. But I've never seen an outpouring like this for one man.”

        Carroll will be at Las Vegas today for the Winston Cup race. With Kentucky having opened in 2000, he has a bit more spare time this year to travel and enjoy some races. He had planned to go to Rockingham, N.C., last week but stayed back because of bad weather.

        Kentucky Speedway's gift shop, like many nationwide, was cleaned out of Earnhardt memorabilia within days.

        “In any sport that loses its legend, it's a difficult time,” Carroll said. “It seems Dale Earnhardt has proven he can do as much in death as when he was alive. Every driver, every owner, the fans ... it seemed he touched everybody, and now it's brought everybody together even more.”

        BIG BUSINESS: Formula One champion Michael Schumacher and Earnhardt were two of the top six paid athletes of 2000, according to Forbes magazine.

        The top five were Schumacher ($59 million), golf's Tiger Woods ($53 million), boxing's Mike Tyson ($48 million), and basketball's Michael Jordan ($37 million) and Grant Hill ($26 million). Earnhardt was No.6 at $24.5 million.

        THE "A' TEAM: Kentucky Speedway will have the top Fox TV team at its NASCAR Busch race June 16, speedway general manager Mark Cassis said.

        Mike Joy, Darrell Waltrip and Larry McReynolds are scheduled to call the race at Kentucky on FX, Fox's sister network.

        NALON RAN HERE: Duke Nalon, who died last week at age 87, was a two-time Indianapolis 500 pole sitter who also raced in the Cincinnati area.

        Tom Konop, a Cincinnati racing historian, said Nalon drove at several local tracks including the old Cincinnati Race Bowl in Evendale and Tacoma Park in Dayton, Ky.

        CATCHING UP: Since this column was on hiatus over the winter, we didn't get to recognize some top efforts from 2000. Among them:

        • Bill Niemeyer Jr., representing the Cincinnati region of the Sports Car Club of America, won the 2000 F-Production national title. Niemeyer is the fifth Cincinnati driver to win a national SCCA title, joining John O'Steen, David Doran, BJ Zacharias and Tom Patton.

        • Cincinnati motorcycle racers Dave Page, Bill Hendricks and Billy Poe finished Nos.2, 3 and 6, respectively, in the 2000 International Drag Bike Association's Top Sportsman class.

        E-mail: tgroeschen@enquirer.com.

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