At just 17 years old, Bryce Applegate began experiencing heart problems.
A 20-year-old Kentucky race car driver is pushing forward in his racing career despite battling a serious health condition.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — A 20-year-old race car driver from Kentucky is working toward his goal of reaching NASCAR while managing a dangerous heart condition.
At 17, Bryce Applegate first noticed something was wrong.
“I was just outside playing basketball with my brother and all of a sudden my heart went into a weird rhythm,” Applegate said. “I was probably maybe 90 beats a minute and then it all jumped up to 300 beats a minute all at one second.”
The situation was alarming for anyone, especially for someone pursuing a career in racing.
Applegate has been racing since the age of 7, starting in go-karts before advancing to full-sized stock cars in ARCA, a developmental league for NASCAR. However, his journey has not been easy.
“Usually, we would have 125 lap races, and I would be really really good for 100 laps but then once you hit 100 in the last 25 I would kind of start tapering off. We didn’t know what was happening,” Applegate said.
Due to his symptoms and declining performance late in races, Applegate sought medical help at the Norton Heart & Vascular Institute, where doctors diagnosed him with an undetected cardiac arrhythmia.
“He has a short circuit in the electrical system in the upper chamber of his heart that causes the bottom chamber to beat really fast,” said Norton cardiac electrophysiologist Dr. Kevin Thomas.
In August, Applegate underwent surgery. Doctors identified the source of the issue and corrected it, restoring his heart to a normal rhythm. That same month, he went on to win a race.
“I didn’t tell any of my race team until we got into victory lane and I said, ‘not bad for a guy that had heart surgery,'” Applegate said.
Following the procedure, he competed in five races and finished in the top five each time.
“Now I can do whatever I want to do, and I don’t have to worry about ‘am I going to go to 300 beats per minute and possibly pass out or something worse,'” he said.
Applegate is now pursuing a degree in motorsports engineering while continuing to chase his dream of racing in NASCAR.
“If you feel something wrong, say something to somebody because you don’t really know if it’s normal for everybody else,” he said.
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