Elliott, who will return to racing this weekend at Martinsville Speedway six weeks after the March 3 accident in Colorado, indicated he tried to be pragmatic in the hours following the injury.
“I tried not to be dramatic about it,” Elliott said about conversations with team owner Rick Hendrick. “I just told him like it was. I knew my knee was messed up.
“I can’t say I ever had the thought of not walking again. I didn’t think it was that severe. I think it could have been a lot worse. But I certainly knew that it wasn’t right and that it was going to probably take surgery.”
He knew he would miss races but didn’t let his mind go to the point of wondering whether his season was over.
“I was just hoping for the best, but whatever it was going to be it was going to be,” Elliott said. “It was done at that point, right?
“So I was more just thinking about tackling what it was and doing what the doctors told me to do to get back to get back to 100 percent as soon as I could.”
Elliott has been snowboarding for most of his life as his family has a home in Vail. He said he would continue snowboarding and enjoying life, that a driver needs to do that to remain mentally ready to race.
“Snowboarding is something that I’ve been doing for a long time. I’m comfortable doing it, and I wasn’t out doing anything that was wild or crazy,” said Elliott, indicating it was just a rough landing. “I don’t have a cool story to tell. It was just that perfect storm that could happen at any point in time.
“It’s one of those things that I’ve used as a training tool over the years, no different than riding bikes. I just don’t agree with that viewpoint of, ‘Well you shouldn’t have been doing this or you shouldn’t have been doing that.’ I feel like I make decisions with my career in mind first. I always have, and this was no different.”
