ONE of the big races at Ladies Day at Aintree tomorrow runs at 4.05pm live on ITV.
It is listed as The Randox Supports Race Against Dementia Topham Chase.
Sir Jackie Stewart with wife Lady Helen who was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia last year
Today Lady Helen’s short-term memory has faded and dementia has taken hold of her mind and body
Race ace Jackie with Helen after his victory at the 1969 Dutch Grnd Prix
Sir Jackie Stewart, the three-time F1 world champion, will be the guest of honour and bring along a famous old race car.
But sadly his beloved wife Lady Helen won’t be there with him.
She’ll be at home.
Nine years ago Helen was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia.
Today her short-term memory has faded and dementia has taken hold of her mind and body.
She needs round-the-clock care.
It will be a familiar story to many of you, seeing a loved one slowly deteriorate at the hands of this cruel disease. It took my dad.
Sir Jackie’s mission as founder of global charity Race Against Dementia is to fund and accelerate research into finding a cure.
As spectacular as his racing career was, he told SE: “This is the greatest challenge that I’ve ever faced.
“Dementia is nothing less than a worldwide epidemic. One in three people born today will develop some form of dementia during their lifetime unless we can do something to change that.
“More people die of dementia now than from any illness in the world. Bigger than cancer.
“Dementia does not discriminate. You could be a multi-billionaire and there’s no cure for it. You could be in your fifties, even younger. You could be Bruce Willis.
‘Sad and terrible’
“This cell up here (points to his brain) is far by the most complicated piece of kit in the whole body.
“But there will be a cure for dementia. I mean, nobody could go to the Moon. Now they can.
“If you can go to the Moon, why can’t there be a cure for dementia? It needs money and resources on a global scale.
“Because of my success in Grand Prix racing, my name is known in a lot of different countries, my name is still alive, so we are getting support from all of these places.
“Some of the most important people in the world give us money, usually because of a family member.
“I won’t stop until we find a cure.”
Sir Jackie, 83, famously called Helen his “stopwatch” — she was the team’s lap- charter and timekeeper during his record-breaking racing days.
He won at Aintree in an F3 race in the Sixties — and that’s the car, a Cooper BMC, that’ll be on show at the Grand National festival.
The Flying Scot said: “Helen was always there supporting me through everything. She was razor-sharp. Brilliant with that stopwatch.”
The pair met at Dino’s Radio Cafe in Helensburgh and married in 1962. They have two sons and nine grandchildren.
The Stewart family has employed a team of neuro nurses to help look after Helen. Sir Jackie can afford it. But he is all too aware that most people can’t. He said: “Dementia is one of the cruellest illnesses for a family. They’ve all got to go out and work. They’ve all got to go to school. And here’s Mummy, or grandparents, with nobody to help them.
“So eventually they have to go to a home and, all of a sudden, they’ve never met these people before. And sometimes it’s a very sad and terrible life they live — because quite a few people live quite a long time with dementia.
“The biggest thing I’ve had to do in my life is to find a cure for dementia. I have committed my life to it now.”
As well as raising awareness of Race Against Dementia through F1, Sir Jackie is using the sport to speed up research by placing top medical research scientists within the Red Bull and McLaren teams. He explained: “Formula 1 moves fast. The pressure to perform is relentless. Problem-solving is done faster than any in other activity in the world. Whether it be aerospace, it doesn’t matter, it’s faster in F1.
“By contrast, medical research can be painfully slow.
“We want to bring some of our F1 technology into the laboratories to speed up processes and to adopt that sense of urgency.”
Jackie, Helen and their two sons on the ‘race tack’ in 1971
Medical giant Randox is another huge supporter and gifted title sponsorship of tomorrow’s Topham Chase to Race Against Dementia.
Sir Jackie said: “The family has been a very generous supporter of Race Against Dementia, and it was they who decided the race would be as their sponsorship.
“Great credit to them — and a great privilege to us because the Grand National festival is one of the greatest sporting events Britain has ever seen.”
