- Stirling Moss is in good spirits after suffering a fall during a freak elevator accident.
- Sir Moss is thanking well wishers via e-mail and his own Web site.
- The venerable racer promises to update fans on his Twitter page.
LONDON — Proving yet again that he is a hero for all time, racing legend Stirling Moss, 80, is reaching out to his many fans on the Internet as he recuperates from a fall down an elevator shaft last weekend.
Moss issued an e-mail message that was published on the Internet, including on U.K. blog Topspeed.com, on Thursday. He thanked his fans for "kind thoughts, messages and other paraphernalia" and put up a photo of the gift-laden hotel room — and his feet in casts — on his own Web site.
On his Web site, he has posted a paragraph exonerating the Williams Formula 1 team from responsibility for the accident. The elevator, located in Moss' home in London, has a carbon-fiber body built by the team, but he clarified that the electrical and mechanical elements were not the work of Williams.
In the statement issued today, Moss writes that the accident, in which he walked into an open elevator shaft by mistake, was "my own damn fault....If I had looked where I was going, I wouldn't be here at all." He says it will be another six to eight weeks before he will be able to "put any load on my feet." Moss explains that this will be his "sixth or seventh reduction to a wheelchair (Susie says she's stopped counting)" and expresses his relief at not having sold the wheelchair after "the last shunt!"
"I can tell you that currently I'm lying in hospital, taking deep breaths, lifting one arm with the other, raising my legs (with plasters on the end) and doing all I can do to keep myself as mobile as possible, but, having said that, I'm not yet winning the battle," he writes.
"This really has opened my eyes to how kind all my friends are, over an old ex-racing driver, flogging a fading image!"
Updates are promised on Stirling Moss' Twitter page.
Inside Line says: Coolest octogenarian ever. — Laura Sky Brown, Correspondent
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