Gone but not forgotten
Gary Gabelich
Record-breaking speed-junkie whose passion for living on the limit inevitably caught up with him
Words by Richard Heseltine
ALAMY
HE FOUND RISK
a life-affirming activity.
Gary Gabelich existed at the raggedy edge, and was never happier than when flirting with a challenge in which the price of failure was death. The Californian of Croation extraction embodied the maxim ‘when in doubt, flat out’.
Nevertheless, it isn’t easy deciphering the actual from the apocryphal, given the breadth of his escapades. For example, he competed in his first drag race aged 15 and topped 300mph on the Bonneville Salt Flats before he was 20.
And by anecdotal, of course, we mean hearsay. What is known is that this charismatic speed-freak wasn’t happy in his first job, steering a Volkswagen Transporter as a delivery driver for a drugstore. He craved excitement, and subsequently joined North American Aviation – in the mail room. In the space of nine years, he had become a test subject for the Apollo programme, whether it was performing freefalls from 30,000 feet or racking up g-force in a centrifuge.