Tall order taking care of Indy prize
Borg-Warner handlers relish task
They are its chaperones, its security guards and its chauffeurs. They are its custodians, its protectors and its entourage. Wherever it goes, they go. Whatever it requires, they provide. Whenever it’s out of their sight, they worry.
They are the caretakers of the Borg-Warner Trophy.
Part of their vigilance stems from the $3.5 million price tag attached to the 81-year-old sterling silver prize but, really, it’s about so much more than that.
The 110-pound award that immortalizes the winner of the Indianapolis 500 “is like my best friend,” said Jason Vansickle, an Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum curator and one of few allowed the privilege of caring for the iconic racing relic.
On Sunday, if all goes as planned, the caretakers will deliver the trophy to the winner’s circle for a triumphant celebration and photos galore before they quietly reclaim it for the night.
For a man who spends as much quality time with the Borg-Warner as Vansickle does, the trophy is more like a close family member than a friend. Vansickle travels with the trophy almost every time it leaves its display at the museum. He’s been on top of the Empire State Building in New York with it and at Chicago’s Wrigley Field. He was with it at the U.S. Capitol building in Washington and on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange as reigning champion Alexander Rossi rang the opening bell.
While away from the museum, the Borg-Warner never leaves Vansickle’s sight. He’s with it 24 hours a day. Literally. On the trip to New York, only a day after Rossi won the 100th running of the 500 last May, the trophy stayed in Vansickle’s hotel room.
“On the night of the victory celebration,” Vansickle said, “when Rossi received the winner’s check and his congratulations for winning, later that night when we got to the hotel and ev- eryone was settled in, the trophy was in my room. It was set up in
my room. It was kind of a neat deal. I mean, the driver didn’t even get that chance.”
“You got to sleep with the trophy,” Brian Sperback chimes in with a laugh. Sperback, who grew up just a few miles away from IMS, is a museum maintenance worker and often partners with Vansickle when caring for and traveling with the trophy.
Despite all the time they spend with it, Vansickle and Sperback cannot always keep the trophy out of harm’s way. Not even when they’re standing right next to it.
The pair recall with horror their journey to the hallowed home of the Chicago Cubs.
Last May, a few weeks before the 500, Vansickle and Sperback packed up the trophy in its three specially designed containers — an intricate process they have perfected — and took it to Wrigley Field to promote the race.
While it turned out there was too much rain to play baseball that day, there was not enough of it to cancel the trophy’s appearance.
Sperback pleaded with the onsite IMS official to keep the trophy out of the rain. It takes seven hours to polish, he explained. The water will leave streaks.
But it was no use. Fans wanted to see the trophy and, for at least a little while, it had to endure the rain.
“We ran it in and out of the dugout to the on-deck circle,” Vansickle remembers with a grimace. “It was a little scary.”
Air, not water, is the biggest and most constant threat to the trophy. Enough exposure without proper maintenance, and the sterling silver will tarnish. But under the cautious care of Sperback and Vansickle, nothing like that — or worse — has happened.
“In the 20 years since I’ve been around it,” Sperback said, “we have not had any major incidents. But I’m knocking on wood as I say that.”
Truth be told, Vansickle said, it bothers him in the rare instances the trophy is not in his care.
He hates days such as May 17, when his “best friend” ventures out into the world without him and Sperback at its side. On that particular Wednesday morning, the Borg-Warner took a field trip to West Clay Elementary School in Carmel, Ind., to meet with a large group of second- and fourth-graders as well as threetime 500 winner Bobby Unser.
It’s tough to let it out of his sight, but Vansickle knows he need not worry about the trophy’s well-being. The two men tasked with caring for it in his stead do so as dutifully and as respectfully as he does. During May, IMS brings in a pair of handpicked veterans of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Safety Patrol — or yellow shirts as they have come to be known — to chauffeur the trophy to its various engagements.
“It’s an honor,” said Ken Lemmon, who has taken the trophy to victory circle the last eight years. “It’s an unbelievable privilege to be chosen to do that.”
Fellow yellow shirt Lee Cole joined Lemmon as trophy chaperones for its adventure to West Clay. Lemmon is the man in charge this May, but he is grooming Cole to replace him beginning next year.
From the moment they arrive on campus, it’s almost as if Lemmon and Cole aren’t there. Hidden in plain sight.
The trophy moves through hallways basking in the stares of awed students, teachers and parents. Cole and Lemmon are guiding it on its wheeled base, but the trophy might as well be floating down the hallway.
As a few of the students get their first peek at it, they shriek with joy.
“Look!” shouts a girl, who was sitting just seconds before but is now jumping up and down and pointing out the trophy to her friends.
From the corner of the room, Lemmon watches with a smile on his face. He’s seen this sort of hoopla and fanfare before, but he still loves the spectacle of it. The trophy is a celebrity, as popular as some of the drivers — and even the same height as one (5-4, like 2013 winner Tony Kanaan).
“What makes it so special is that it’s the only one,” Lemmon said, noting there are three iterations of hockey’s legendary Stanley Cup. “The Borg-Warner is sacred.”
Lemmon concedes, even after all these years, that he still gets nervous handling the trophy. They all do.
“So nervous,” Lemmon said. “We haven’t had any miscues, and I don’t even want to think about having one. If something happened to that trophy, I probably wouldn’t go back to the track.”
While there’s little chance that will ever happen, the nerves are sort of what make their job special.
The Borg-Warner caretakers know how few people ever get to touch the trophy, even with gloves on.
They know that every driver would love to take that trophy home with them. Unser said as much that day at West Clay.
But that doesn’t happen. Instead, the trophy stays in the care of people such as Lemmon and Vansickle, where they can keep it safe.
“It always comes back at night,” Vansickle said. “Before it goes trackside or to a school, it comes back here.”
His best friend home again. Every time it happens, he feels a little bit better.