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(CNN) -- Ten years ago, stock car racing's last great roughneck hit the wall and the wall won.
Dale Earnhardt would not grow old and slow, clogging up life's left lane. He would not gracefully slide into a senior citizenship of driving to the Wal-Mart in a Grand Marquis with plastic flowers waving from the antenna.
He would die a legend's death at the age of 49, on the last turn of the last lap of the greatest race his kind knows. He died running, as he used to put it, WFO -- Wide (Bleeping) Open.
In third place of the 2001 Daytona 500, shielding the two cars ahead of him -- both owned by him, and one driven by his namesake son -- Earnhardt yielded not an inch of asphalt. Sterling Marlin bumped him ever so slightly from the rear, and in the ensuing chain reaction of bumper cars at 160 mph, Earnhardt's famous black No. 3 Chevy was sent up the track and nose-first into the wall.
The sport had seen a thousand worse-looking wrecks in which everyone walked away angry but unmarked. Something was bad wrong with this one, though. Witnesses knew it immediately after the driver was lifted from the wreckage and rushed to the hospital, when workers draped a tarp over Earnhardt's car like cops covering a body at a crime scene.
Two hours later, NASCAR President Mike Helton faced the world and announced, "We've lost Dale Earnhardt."
At the 10-year mark of the death of a seven-time Sprint Cup (formerly Winston Cup) champion, there will be many tributes laid at the feet of Earnhardt's memory. Some will come from the television booth on February 20 at the next running of the Daytona 500.
cnn.com
