After Dinner Speakers: Bob Champion, Clive Coleman, Little & Large

Very few people become a legend in their lifetime, but in Bob Champion there certainly is one. There can be very few people throughout the world who don’t know his story, his battle against cancer and his fairytale win of the 1981 Grand National on Aldaniti. Being a natural horseman it was inevitable that he should ride as an amateur. He rode his first winner at Plumpton on 17 January 1968, turned professional in May of that year and was one of the top five jump jockeys in Great Britain up until discovery of cancer in two parts of his body in July 1979. The following year was spent in and out of hospital with chemotherapy treatment, the side effects of which are alarming. Bob lost all the hair on his head and body, and shed three stone in weight. Undeterred, he continued with his long, uphill and painful battle to regain fitness and on 31 May 1990, won his comeback ride on the flat in America. The rest is history. Bob continued to ride for another year ending his career as a professional jump jockey on Luman at Wetherby on 13 April 1982, his 421st winner on English soil. Ironically, his retirement had been forced about by weight problems. Bob began training in Autumn 1982 and continues to work in a business which has been his life, interspersed only by personal appearances both for the public and in aid of his own charity The Bob Champion Cancer Trust which has to date raised over Ł2 million, After Dinner speaking engagements and his family, totally unaffected by the media exposure given to him.