Matt VanderVere’s motto: “If you’re going to be cut short, you sure as hell better get out and enjoy it." So he races with the World of Outlaws.
WILMOT – Ask Matt VanderVere if he’s doing OK, and his answer is only cryptic if you don’t know his story.
“I am,” he says, “and I’m not.”
VanderVere is very much in his happy place, the pits at Wilmot Raceway, eager to strap into a sprint car and go as fast as the primitive, winged, 900-horsepower beast can take him. Racing has helped define him, like his wife, kids and old job as a union carpenter have.
When the night is done and the car is loaded back in the dusty white trailer, though, VanderVere will still have cancer.
His entire life, not just his race car, is on the clock.
VanderVere will be waiting for the next round of monthly chemotherapy injections in his belly and still be taking a powerful pill daily. He’ll anticipate the next flareup and imagine another stem cell treatment that will turn his immune system back into that of a newborn and result in another monthlong hospital stay.
He’ll prepare for the conversation with doctors who’ll tell him how much more time he may have left to live. Seven to 10 years, they said last time. That was four years ago.
“Just because you have cancer doesn’t mean you have to quit what you like doing,” VanderVere says. “So that’s why I still race.
“Probably not the smartest thing, but at the end of the day, you know, you want to enjoy yourself. We’re definitely not as good as I would like to be, but nobody else out here is doing what I’m doing.”
VanderVere has multiple myeloma, a blood cancer first diagnosed in 2021 when he was 34. He had lost weight and just wasn’t feeling right, and after some wrangling with insurance, VanderVere got in for a checkup at Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin and has been making the regular commute from Burlington ever since.
VanderVere is retired at age 38 but not by choice. The disease has damaged VanderVere’s heart, sapping his stamina, and eaten away at his bones, making them more brittle.
Hot days are harder. Hot like this sticky evening at Wilmot, before rain came in and washed out the July 11 World of Outlaws event. Hot like the following night also would be.
VanderVere is thin – some might say gaunt – with a thick black beard. He dabs the sweat off his face through a 20-minute conversation, but he’s hardly alone. That’s just the sort of day it is.
“Preparing the car at home, I just kind of do as much as I can every day,” he says. “Not go crazy, and if I don’t feel good, I go in the house. If I don’t feel good, I just don’t work on it.
“Today being this hot, you don’t see me doing a lot out there and you’re just kind of sitting back because it’s so hot.”
VanderVere dreamed of running the entire 30-plus races of the regional Interstate Racing Association schedule in 2025. Midway through the year he is well short of that.
“Chemo’s usually on a Friday or Thursday and then I don’t feel good after chemo,” VanderVere says. “Usually it takes about a week out to really start feeling yourself again. Those weekends, if I feel OK, I’ll go. If I don’t, I just don’t go. We stay home.”
The treatments also leave him immunocompromised, so he generally should stay away from people.
But VanderVere’s father and brother raced, as did an uncle who took him along on the IRA circuit when VanderVere was young. The racetrack will always be a place he belongs.
After VanderVere was diagnosed, he stepped out of his race car for about a year. He put another driver in his car, but that didn’t work as well as hoped, so he gave it another try.
Ultimately that’s probably what will happen to the No. 10v car. VanderVere will own it, and someone else will drive.
Son Kevin doesn’t have an interest, and while daughter Amber does, she’s college material and would have to finish before Dad would consider that possibility.
Sprint cars are inherently violent, so VanderVere has beefed up his car to provide more protection. He’s also – grudgingly – become less aggressive.
“It’s dangerous for somebody like me because of the bones. But at the end of the day, you know, you can get hurt doing anything,” he says. “Driving down the road or anything you do, you can still end up with the same issue.
“Am I as competitive as I was? No, not even close. … That’s because I can’t take the chances we used to.”
Yet here VanderVere is, racing with the World of Outlaws, as he did a month ago when they raced up the road at the Plymouth Dirt track.
The Outlaws are the original traveling series for 410 sprint cars. The top teams have millions of dollars invested in their semis, race cars and engines and compete 90 nights a year.
VanderVere is one of the local drivers who help fill out the field at each stop on the tour. He can’t compete with David Gravel or Buddy Kofoid or Carson Macedo in terms of budget or day-in, day-out experience but entered the weekend with optimism as the 2017 and 2018 track champion and winner of numerous races here.
He qualified 18th among 30 drivers, made the feature via the last-chance race and ended up 20th in the feature won by Kofoid.
VanderVere chuckles at the idea that wherever he finishes in any given race, he is first in his class, his class being those actively dealing with cancer. Maintaining his humor is important along with maintaining perspective.
VanderVere has a racing bucket list, which is something that seems all too real, given his condition. For as long as he can recall, he has wanted to participate in the Kings Royal at Eldora Speedway in Ohio and the Knoxville Nationals at Knoxville Raceway in Iowa, two of the crown jewel events of sprint car racing.
“That may be the end of it,” VanderVere says.
“If that’s just the way it’s got to be, then that’s it. I really don’t care how we run at them. I just want to go to experience it in the car, not just as a fan. It’s not the same.”
Beyond racing – and beyond enjoying time with family – VanderVere also would like to inspire people with his story.
Recently he took part in a group chat with people recently diagnosed with similar types of cancer. VanderVere offered insight into the road ahead but also shared a broader message.
“Just because you have that diagnosis doesn’t mean that life’s over. Life just began,” he says. “If you’re going to be cut short, you sure as hell better get out and enjoy it.
“I looked at it as being able to retire allowed me to spend more time with my kids, spend more time with my wife, do things like that. When … you’re only going to get about this much more life, it really makes you open your eyes and say, well, really, I need to get out and start doing stuff. I need to enjoy myself as much as I can.
“And I enjoy racing.”
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin sprint car driver VanderVere races through cancer treatment
Category: General Sports
