The Vancouver Sun from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada • 48

K4 M0LSON INDY 2000 lll' VANUH'VI lv SIN, Wl DM SHAY. An.l'ST.m 2000 Driver's biography dearly celebrates a life Greg Moore had strong ties to home Greg Moore: A Legacy of Spirit will be launched today at Molson Indy to spearhead initiative for the foundation that was established in memory of the Maple Ridge native. i)IC his roots here and have a strong tie to the community in both Maple Ridge and Vancouver. "I've been around sports stars a long time and there are only a few who rise above their sport, who are extraordinary people and try to do things well and right. Greg was a natural." Begun quietly last December by Ric Moore, Hurst and others after thousands of donations flooded into a trust account in Greg's name, the Vancouver Molson Indy will be the foundation's unofficial launch pad.

The Molson Indy Gala on Thursday night will be a tribute to Moore, with proceeds going to GMF. (The foundation's core Moore: A Legacy of Spirit that will be launched today as a spearhead initiative for the Greg Moore Foundation. Net proceeds from the sparkling coffee-table book, published by Vancouver's Whitecap Hooks, whose lusciously-illustrated works have earned wide acclaim, will go to the foundation established in the wake of Moore's death to expand the charity work he had begun. "Greg was full of life," foundation director Mike Hurst, a close friend of Ric who became a business advisor to Greg, says. "He was living around the world, but he wanted to keep BY IAIN MutiNTYKIv He is in many thousands of photographs and millions of videotape frames.

But one of the most telling, poignant images of Greg Moore was the one he drew for Father's Day when he was six years old. All smiling, bulbous face and stickman body, arms held wide, Moore crayoned himself right beside his dad, Ric. Near them is a car. It is an image that defines better than words the short, happy life of the race car driver from Maple Ridge, killed last Oct. 31 at age 24 during a race in California.

It is one of 175 pictures in the memorial book, Greg v. i Vt ft; -4. 5T 1 1 1 charities are the B.C. Brain Injury Association, the Juvenile Diabetes Association, Ridge Meadows Hospital Foundation, Vancouvcr-UBC Hospital Foundation, and the B.C. Kidney Foundation).

A private party Friday night also will raise funds. Saturday's fastest qualifier will receive the Greg Moore Pole Award, and Sunday's race will be preceded by a public, 10-minute tribute to Moore culminating in a moving two-minute video. The book unveiling Wednesday starts Greg Moore week. The main text was written by respected Toronto Sun motor-sports reporter Dan Proudfoot, with sidebar stories by Toronto's Gordon Kirby and Vancouver's Jim Taylor. The book's strength is its artwork.

But between the photos, many of them from the Moore family albums, there are enough words to give a glimpse of the rare bond that existed between father and son. Ric Moore, who nearly bankrupted his auto dealership to support Greg's climb through racing and rarely missed a drive by his son, admits that his own father "disappeared" when he was young and that Ric left home at 16. A story is retold about a conversation between Ric and Greg in 1996 after American driver Jeff Krosnoff was killed in the Toronto Indy race. "I said to Greg," Ric recalls, 'It's part of this job. People die.

That's the way it And there is text from a letter Ric wrote to his son when he was 12, reminding Greg to be grateful for his gift and remain humble and respectful. Best of all, there are the cards that Greg, as a child, made for his father the Father's Day picture, and a letter Greg printed to tell his dad he was "sowhrery" he "popt" the soccer ball, and that he loved him and was sad that his father was mad. Proudfoot, who became friends with the Moores during years of covering Greg, said interviews with Ric this spring thing Moore did well. A recurring theme throughout the book is how Moore's humour and disarming nature attracted other drivers to him. Not always a neighbourly "community" before Moore arrived in Indy, he became the centrepiece of a drivers' Brat Pack that included a Scotsman, Italian, Brazilian and American.

Tony Kanaan, the Brazilian who has added Moore's No. 99 to his helmet and can't get himself to delete Greg's phone number from his speed dial, says in the book: "It looks like special people have a short life. Not all, but some of them. God puts special people here for a while. and then He takes them back.

I think that's what happened. "Greg is up there in a better place, and he's laughing big-: time. "If he was always laughing! were painful. "My hope is their relationship will come out in this book," Proudfoot says. "I've written about several deaths over the years, but never someone I knew as well as Greg.

And never someone I imagined to be so untouchable. I have been quite emotional about the whole thing. I hate to think of living through this experience again." Surprisingly, there is very little in the book about Greg's death. Only a handful of paragraphs detail that horrific Halloween at Fontana, although Proudfoot does reveal that Greg's sister, Annie, telephoned before the race to tell her brother she loved him and that he shouldn't drive because his hand had been injured the previous day. Greg Moore: A Legacy of Spirit is an authorized biography and clearly is meant as a celebration of the driver's life.

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