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Colin Amann:
"I try not to hit things." - [03/07/03]
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By Kevin Priestner
Houston attorney Colin Amann, who moonlights as a professionalracecar
driver, has gleaned two important lessons from his life on the track:it’s
useless to apply your brakes while airborne and unwise to undo your seatbelt
while upside-down.
Amann appears to have applied these maxims to his life beyond the track
as well.He was an avid racecar driver in his youth, but took a 15-year sabbatical
to practice law, returning to the sport only after being diagnosed with
primarysclerosing cholangitis, a rare liver disorder. At that point, Amann
made a commitment to himself to live the remainder of his life “with
zest” and to draw as much attention as possible to the efforts of
the American Liver Foundation.
“Racing is an advertising industry,” Amann says, “So I
thought, ‘Why not try to get the word out?’”
Amann’s team is known as Cymru Racing (Cymru is the Celtic word for
Wales) and his car is emblazoned with the Welsh flag and the logo of the
American Liver
Foundation. “I’ve been really surprised at the attention
to both of the logos,” he says.
When he was 17, Amann’s parents sent him to the Jim Russell Racing
Drivers School in Sonoma, Calif. He followed this with a stint at the Jim
Russell Racing Drivers School in England, after which he returned to the
United States and began competing professionally at the club level.
As a student at the University of Houston Law Center, however, Amann’s
interests shifted from the wheels of formula cars to the wheels of justice.
He clerked with renowned defense attorney Mike Ramsey, and when Ramsey offered
him a job, Amann retired from racing and devoted himself full-time to practicing
law.
Amann found that his racetrack experiences helped him in the courtroom.
“From my perspective, there’s no way you can race cars and be
nervous trying a case,” he says. “It’s a great confidence
builder.”
In 1993, after a decade with Ramsey, Amann set out on his own. He continues
to handle mostly criminal defense work, but now balances his legal life
with racing on weekends and advocacy for liver research. Amann is chair
of the South Texas Chapter of the American Liver Foundation, in which capacity
he is lobbying for a consolidation of the 14 National Institutes of Health
entities currently conducting liver research. Being a lawyer, he believes,
has helped him get his calls returned. “It lends a little more credibility,”
he says.
Amann is an effective, if self-effacing, advocate for liver research. “If
you can put a face on a disease, like that of Michael J. Fox or Christopher
Reeve, it is incredibly effective in terms of awareness and funding,”
Amann says. “The problem is, I’m neither famous nor good-looking,
so all I can do is talk.”
And drive. In November, Amann participated in a six-hour endurance race
to raise funds for the American Liver Foundation. The pledges Amann collected
were respectable, but he is convinced he can raise more for the cause. [Those
interested in contributing to the next “Colin’s Chase”
can contact Amann at (713)865-5600 or cbamann@hotmail.com]
Clients are interested in his racing career, and forgiving of the debilitating
weakness that accompanies his liver disorder, but Amann allows himself no
breaks. “Lawyering is a 24/7 deal and I work until what needs to get
done gets done,” he says. “These people have problems, too.
And quite frankly, it’s good therapy. When I work, it has a buoying
effect, and the harder I work, the more adept I feel.”
As for the driving itself, Amann has transitioned back into racing fairly
seamlessly. The races he attends typically occur over the course of three
days, with Fridays devoted to testing and getting to know the track, and
Saturdays and Sundays to racing. Amann estimates there are at least eight
classes of cars competing in these races. He drives Spec Racer Fords, which
are designed, in theory, to be identical. “It makes you feel better
when you do well,” Amann says.
Amann emphasizes that he participates in road racing, not oval racing. “We
don’t just go round and round,” he says. Driving well, he says,
“is not a matter of giving more gas; it’s a matter of driving
smoothly.”
Amann cannot claim to have always driven smoothly. In his earlier stint
as a racer, he had one very bad wreck that wiped out his car. “I remember
thinking, ‘If I can go through life and only be upside down once,
I’ll be happy’,” he says. Since returning to racing in
November 2001, Amann has had a single minor brush-up at the Texas Motor
Speedway. “I try not to hit things,” he says.
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