Quotes from Alex Zanardi

Obviously my feelings for Portland are quite special because that's where I obtained one of my greatest career satisfactions; like the first love, you never forget the first win!

My wife has always been positive. In the hospital my brother-in-law was trying to prepare her for the worst, but she said, 'Hold on, I don't want to hear that. He'll be all right. I'm going to ring BMW now and order a car with manual controls because the first thing he'll want to do when he leaves hospital is drive.' She knew her husband!

At the time I was asked if I would ever step back in a race car, but what was very important for me was to go into the bathroom and pee on my own, but I could not do that. I had to be helped. That was my number one priority.

When you're young, not only do you not have any money, you don't think something can happen to you. I raced some races without insurance in the early days of my career. I didn't think about it at all.

The best thing I can do is keep advertising myself by winning races.

I said I preferred Daytona to LeMans if I were to race. LeMans is a great event, don't get me wrong, but here in the U.S. is where I turned my life around, where I have a lot of friends, where I feel have my greatest following - not in terms of quantity but of quality - of racing fans.

Everybody is calling me crazy because I want to do the Ironman. I'm not doing it to win it. I'm doing it to finish it. I'm racing myself, not a particular field or group of people.

The fact that I'm racing, yes, is important, it's my passion, but, it's not my life, racing.

When I arrived in Champ Cars, which at the time used to be called Indy Cars and then got renamed CART and then renamed Champ Cars, I was racing against Jimmy Vasser, my team-mate, but more than him, I was racing against Michael Andretti, Emerson Fittapaldi, Al Unser Jr. - guys that had big names.

I will do something, time to time, with motor racing. But I'll never go back, I think, to drive full-time because I've lost that anger, that desire.

If you train hard and work hard eventually you will gain results, and that is the real spirit of life.

I feel gifted for having the opportunity to compete in Daytona.

The question I asked when I woke up was not how am I going to live without legs - but how am I going to do all the things I want to do without legs? There was no doubt that I was going to do them, I was just curious to find out how - but I knew I was going to find a way.

Whether it is a small thing or big one, step-by-step you can make things happen.

I know that I am a lucky guy. I know that after an accident like the one I had, you know, only one guy out of a thousand can really go back home and still live. And I am that one. So I am totally aware of that.

Today, I don't have any psychological scars, because I am a realist and an optimist. After all, I can't lose my legs twice.

Portland is a permanent road course built in a beautiful state, which is for me a fantastic area for many reasons. The downside is that the weather is so unpredictable that it's not uncommon to start the race on the dry and end with the rain as it happened to me in 1996 when I won my first Champ Car race.

After I finished racing in the United States, I received a lot of criticism for being dangerous, a little bit stupid, insane, you name it.

It would be completely wrong and arrogant of me to say that this is what I am, an inspiration to others. During the course of my recovery, I bumped into people with amazing stories, far more amazing than mine.

Once you put everything in the right perspective, even bad times can be an opportunity to refresh your appetite, your desire.

I bump into a lot of people that have similar problems that I have but less titles or magazines than I have, and they just challenge their adversity with the same tenacity, with the same enthusiasm, with the same will to succeed because life is one and you've got to take advantage.

We all are limited in that none of us can fly and none of us can run faster than some animals, but we figure out a way to go to Tokyo if we have to, right? Or we run faster than an animal with a race car.

The accident for sure was one of the most important experiences of my life. During the course of my rehabilitation I had people who were exactly what I needed to be inspired.

I guess, when I go there in the centre, when I do my rehabilitation, I look at the people with only one leg and I actually envy them because I'd love to have one leg. I guess the ones that only have one leg, they envy the ones that they are only missing one leg below the knee, and on and on.