Nashville is notorious for country-music songs reciting tales of lost love, lost fortunes, even lost jobs, dogs, and other best friends.

But NHRA Top Alcohol Dragster driver Shawn Cowie, whose Grand Ole Opry-worthy ballad of bad luck began in Nashville and has reached a happy crescendo on the West Coast, lives a country song in reverse. He has gone from losing to winning.

He lost his health, freedom of movement, and freedom to pursue his career and his racing when a drunk driver hit him as he rode his motorcycle on Interstate 40 during his cross-continent trip to the Charlotte race. The impact launched Cowie over a bridge railing and 27 feet below, where he landed, mercifully, in shrubbery.

Now, nearly three years later, the 32-year-old Canadian racer from Surrey, British Columbia, has won twice in the comeback that doctors told him to forget about. He’s planning to compete in Division 6 races and nine national events this season. And he and wife Taylor are expecting their first baby in March.

In April 2011, Cowie lay in a hospital bed in Nashville, battered literally from head to toe. He suffered a broken neck, back, and pelvis, along with internal injuries, a crushed ankle, and legs mangled so severely doctors thought they would have to amputate one. Doctors referred to the bone remnants in his almost literally pulverized right foot and ankle as “dust.” He has undergone corrective surgery, cosmetic surgery, skin grafts, and exercises almost as excruciating as the damage itself.

Although Cowie still travels down to the nearby Ladner/Tsawassen area just above the U.S. border several times a week for physical therapy, he said he isn’t going to allow the accident to define him. Besides, he has encountered obstacles for much of his life.

“Life isn’t easy,” he said, laughing that can’t-win-for-losing kind of laugh.

“When I grew up, I had a learning disability, dyslexia. So I’ve had challenges my whole life,” Cowie said. “When someone says ‘You can’t . . .’ that just gives you more motivation to be able to do it. You don’t want that to define you. So you keep pushing forward to try to do it. It’s just something that you have to do.”

The accident, like dyslexia, he said “is just one of those things you have to deal with.”

He said, “I’ve been told a lot of times I can’t do things. You really can’t say you can’t do things. It’s all in how you adapt to it. I just try to find a way that works for me to be able to do it.”

Medical experts told Cowie he might never walk again and definitely wouldn’t race again. But he proved them wrong last July 14, winning the Division 6 race at Woodburn, Ore., from the No. 1 qualifying position. That was his first time back in the race car. Just 18 days later, he beat Garrett Bateman in the Top Alcohol Dragster final round of the national event at Seattle.

So Cowie showed everybody that he wasn’t just a stubborn drag racer. He proved he was a winning one again, picking up where he left off. He had just won at Las Vegas days before his nearly fatal accident.    

“The doctors told me numerous times that I wouldn’t be able to get back in the race car,” he said. “They didn’t quite understand what racing I did. But they said my body wouldn’t be able to take it anymore.

“As time went on, the stronger I got and felt like this is something I probably still can do. That gave the motivation to keep going to physiotherapy and keep working harder, so I CAN do the things I love and enjoy.”

He said he does get updates about the young woman who hit him and is disappointed to know that – in his words — “She got off easy” and “She’s back doing the same thing. She never learned from her mistakes. She didn’t learn from it – young and dumb, I guess. I wish she had learned from it so this doesn’t happen to somebody else. Only time will tell if she matures.”

That attitude has evolved from initial anger.

“I was angry in the beginning of it,” Cowie said. “It was always, ‘Why me?’ But now I’ve just come to the sense that it happened, there’s nothing I can do about it, and you’ve got to look forward instead of looking back at it – or you’ll just get depressed about it.

“Do I have resentment against the girl who hit me? I think she got off a little easy. So that kind of bugs me,” he said. “I try not to dwell on it, because it’s in the past and I can’t do anything about it. Might as well look forward and try to get better.”

He has a full 2014 to look forward to. The baby’s arrival is on track to coincide with the spring Las Vegas race, so he might have to pass up that one. But he’ll be at Pomona for the season-opening Circle K Winternationals at Pomona, Calif.

“Our plans are up in the air for what races we’re doing,” Cowie said of his family owned and funded team. “The plans are not set 100 percent in stone.” He said if he misses the Las Vegas event, “the end of the year’s going to be busy for us.

“We’ll just take it in stride and see how things go throughout the year,” he said. “My whole objective is to go out and have fun. If we end up getting in a points chase, we’ll go for it. But if we don’t do so well at the beginning of the year, there’s not a ton of stress – just go have fun.

“We don’t know exactly yet. It’s going to be a whole new experience, having the little one around. It’s exciting,” he said while taking time this week from his dad’s Mundies Towing business. “We’ll see how things pan out and go have fun.

“Right now, I’ve got eight or nine national events scheduled. I think you have to have 10 if you want to chase points,” Cowie said.

“There’s still options. We’re thinking of stuff at the end of the year, possibly Reading, Dallas, or something like that,” he said. “But if we don’t do well at the beginning of the year, we’re not going to spend time and money to travel to the East Coast.”

Said Cowie, “The whole baby thing is going to be interesting.”

In the meantime, he knows he’ll be making the 15-minute drive down to Ladner for physiotherapy.

“They tell me to do it at least once a week,”Cowie said, “but I do it a little more frequently than that.”

He reports to the physiotherapy gym to ride a stationary bike, do stretching exercises, lift some weights, and, he said, “just try to keep mobile so I don’t seize up.”

The workouts aren’t aimed at any one of his traumatized extremities. “It’s pretty much for everything – my back, my legs, my foot. It’s quite intense, but it’s good for me,” he said.

Cowie, who used to live in Delta, moved to his parents’ home at Tsawassen as soon as he left the hospital at nearby New Westminster because the home was a single-story one and he didn’t have to navigate stairs. 

“I established my routine with everybody at the physiotherapy clinic out there, and I didn’t want to change,” he said.

As he grinds out the miles on the bike or struggles to lift those weights for one for set of reps, Cowie might think of that Kris Kristofferson song, “Why Me, Lord” . . . “Why me, Lord? What have I ever done to deserve even one of the pleasures I’ve known?”

That’s the kind of individual Shawn Cowie is – and it’s one of the reasons he shared the Mike Aiello “Spirit of Drag Racing” Award last November at Pomona with Top Fuel driver Antron Brown.

He spun the country-music record backwards and got his mobility, his racing groove, his freedom, his health, and his bright future back.

Yes, Cowie has walked with a limp since he willed himself from that hospital bed. Were it not for his humble nature, he could walk with a swagger now if he chose to. With his happy outlook these days, he’ll just settle for a fresh spring in his step.