Dean Goforth wasn’t about to let a little matter like a shattered ankle get in the way of driving his Extreme Pro Stock Pontiac GXP.

A bad fall off the step outside the door of his motorhome last month sent him to a local hospital from the ADRL race in Martin, Michigan. After telling doctors there that he planned to get back in his race car the next day, Goforth woke up from sedation after having his dislocated right ankle reset, only to find a temporary cast on his leg that reached from foot to hip.

His race weekend over, a frustrated Goforth headed home to Oklahoma, where he soon underwent surgery to have a rod and plate permanently affixed by four screws to a broken bone on the right side of his ankle. This time he woke up with an incision that took 14 staples to close and a bright orange cast surrounding his leg below the knee.

Dean Goforth wasn’t about to let a little matter like a shattered ankle get in the way of driving his Extreme Pro Stock Pontiac GXP.

A bad fall off the step outside the door of his motorhome last month sent him to a local hospital from the ADRL race in Martin, Michigan. After telling doctors there that he planned to get back in his race car the next day, Goforth woke up from sedation after having his dislocated right ankle reset, only to find a temporary cast on his leg that reached from foot to hip.

His race weekend over, a frustrated Goforth headed home to Oklahoma, where he soon underwent surgery to have a rod and plate permanently affixed by four screws to a broken bone on the right side of his ankle. This time he woke up with an incision that took 14 staples to close and a bright orange cast surrounding his leg below the knee.

“They (Oklahoma doctors) couldn’t understand why they (Michigan doctors) put such a huge cast on and I told them I didn’t know,” Goforth says. “But of course I did know; I just didn’t want them to do the same thing.”

Despite a pair of crutches as new constant companions, Goforth, who missed the next ADRL race in Topeka due to the injury, set his sights on attending—and entering—last weekend’s two-in-one ADRL event at Houston Raceway Park. He’d already qualified 16th for the rain-postponed Dragpalooza VI to be completed on Friday and thought he might be able to at least qualify for the inaugural ADRL Texas Drags on Saturday, too. It was all about staying in the points chase to be among the top eight in the ADRL’s Battle for the Belts that will determine the 2010 Extreme Pro Stock world champion this October at Ennis, Texas.

First, however, there was the matter of the cast on his right foot. ADRL officials had made it clear Goforth would not be allowed to compete without approved fire-resistant gear, as well as being able to demonstrate he could exit the car in short order on his own.

To address the first requirement, Goforth visited Stroud Safety in Oklahoma City, a few hours’ drive away from his home in Holdenville.

“Dean arrived here with one of his old fire suits and after taking a few measurements, we stitched up a kind of ‘sock’ from one of the suit’s legs to go over his foot and cast and added elastic to hold it tight against his normal fire suit so it met all SFI specs,” Stroud Plant Manager Mike Conaughty explains of the one-off solution. “We’re happy to work with racers to keep them safe as long as what they want still meets all the requirements.”

So with one obstacle cleared, Goforth geared up for the double-duty weekend. Soon after arrival at the Baytown, Texas, strip he quickly quelled any concerns ADRL officials may have harbored about his fitness to race.

Still, it wasn’t easy.

“It was a lot harder than I expected, a lot harder. If I wasn’t so hard headed I would’ve backed out,” Goforth can now admit. “But after all the things I’d said about driving there, I knew I’d never hear the end of it if I didn’t.”

With the clumsy cast on his sore accelerator foot, Goforth was forced into operating both clutch and brake with his left, making for a challenging dance in the cockpit on every pass down the ADRL eighth mile.

In the opening round of eliminations for Dragpalooza VI and the first qualifying opportunity for the Texas Drags, plus his first with the cast and cover on his foot, Goforth completed his burnout, but then his car shut off, making him miss a chance to race his son and number-one qualifier Cary Goforth.

As a consolation prize, though, with only 12 Extreme Pro Stockers on the grounds Goforth was guaranteed a spot in the Texas Drags field. Regardless, he made all three of his remaining qualifying attempts, eventually placing 11th with a 4.20 that paired him up against second-place starter Pete Berner for Saturday’s first round of racing.

Probably not surprisingly, Berner left with a huge advantage over Goforth’s ankle-impaired .191 light, but when Berner’s car lost traction Goforth sailed by to gain a most-definitely unexpected 4.31 win.

“I made it over to Pete at the top end and told him, ‘You’ve never been beaten by someone who didn’t want to beat you as bad as I did,’” Goforth says. “I was hurting by then and felt ready to stop.”

He obviously wasn’t throwing in the towel, however, as Goforth posted a much-improved reaction time in round two and made a solid 4.21 pass at 172.39 mph, his top speed of the weekend. It wasn’t enough to hold off Bob Bertsch to advance, but overall the effort paid off with a move for Goforth up to the eighth and final Belts slot.

On Wednesday this week, Goforth visited his local doctor again, who removed the cast and gave him instead a removable, air-pressure-activated boot with a hard sole for eventual walking. For now, though, Goforth has been instructed to stay off the foot for at least two more weeks—taking him past another ADRL “two-fer” Aug. 6-7, when the rain-postponed Topeka race will be completed ahead of the Gateway Drags III, near St. Louis.

“I’ll still be on crutches, but at least I’ll be able to take the boot off before each run and just put my regular driving shoe on. Then we’ll just make the switch back to the boot on the golf cart when they come down to pick me up,” Goforth explains.

He also will have a hand brake installed in the car to ease and lessen the footwork.

“I’ll stumble my way through one more this way and by Rockingham (Sep. 10-11), I should be back to being half normal,” he says. “I really want to make it into that Battle for the Belts, so I’m just doing what I have to do to make that happen.”