Grant Denyer’s shock near-miss
Family Feud’s Grant Denyer tells The daredevil TV star gets a shocking wake- up call
Devoted father-of-two Grant Denyer knows how lucky he is to be alive after miraculously surviving a horror car crash in Victoria last week.
And he says it was thinking of his daughters – Scout, 18 months, and five-year-old Sailor – that helped him pull through.
Grant, 39, was lucky to escape the mangled wreck of his Lotus rally car. After almost losing his life for a second time because of his addiction to danger – he broke his back in a monster truck accident in 2008 – he says his outlook has changed forever.
“I have to remember I am a father, first and foremost,” he says in an interview from his hospital bed, adding that becoming a dad again in 2005 transformed him, and he would now rethink his lifelong love of high-speed motor racing.
The much-loved TV star, and his navigator and good mate Dale Moscatt, almost died after their rally car hit a tree stump at 160km per hour and ran off the road, during the Lake Mountain Sprint at Marysville in country Victoria.
Without a thought for his own painful injuries, brave Grant clambered from the wreckage and climbed a hill to hail another rally driver, because he was terrified the wreck would burst into flames with Dale trapped inside.
“She was a wild old ride and we’re a bit lucky to make it out the other side,” admits a shaken Grant, who was last week in hospital with a fractured coccyx x (tailbone) and a broken finger. But he knows it could have been n far, far worse.
“It’s kind of chilling when you watch it back,” he says of the video footage of the accident.
“I was in two minds about whether or not I wanted to see it, because I remember it all too vividly.”
The fate of his hero, legendary driver Peter Brock – who died when his car hit a tree at a rally in WA in 2006 – flashed into his mind seconds before impact.
“[Brocky’s] was a much lower speed accident than ours, and we all know how that one ended. So it played on our minds and all I could do was wrestle the car away from a head-on impact with the tree,” he says.
Grant’s wife Cheryl, 36, was at home in Bathurst, NSW, with their two girls when the crash happened. She rushed to Grant’s side, hoping her “daredevil” husband was going to be OK, but fearing the worst.
“It’s been a hard day,” she said after the “freak accident”, which follows Grant’s terrible crash nine years ago, when he was unable to walk for months.
It was the love of Cheryl and their beautiful daughters that sustained Grant when his life flashed before his eyes.
“How lucky am I to be blessed with three absolutely beautiful girls?” he says, admitting he will have to “reassess” things after a lifetime spent dicing with death on the race track.
“I love my girls … having kids has taught me to slow down.”
He also knows he’s probably almost run out of “lives” when it comes to his addiction to danger.
“It’s been a rough couple of days, but I’ve got the chance now to take stock of it and be thankful it all ended OK and I’m relatively unscathed, after what was a pretty big crash.
“Dale and I are both pretty lucky injury-wise, and although we’re very sore, we’re making good progress.”
But Grant – who has had to indefinitely postpone filming new episodes of Family Feud for Ten – isn’t yet promising to give up his beloved motor racing, saying he doesn’t want to be too scared to embrace life.
“One key lesson I’ve learnt along the journey is that life is not about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s about learning how to dance in the rain,” he says, admitting speed racing remains the “ultimate adrenaline shot for me.”
“It probably makes you reflect on the risks you take … my risks might be slightly more measured from now on.”
‘The accident is kind of chilling when you watch it back’