Up in f lames: Champion’s life in photos destroyed by car park fire
IT WAS one of the greatest moments in British sporting history. A jockey who had conquered cancer, riding a horse who had fought back from three serious injuries, in the toughest race of them all. When Bob Champion and Aldaniti won the 1981 Grand National, there was hardly a dry eye in the country.
Their victory earned them the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Team Award, and was made into a film, Champions, with John Hurt in the lead role.
Now, however, 69-year-old Mr Champion is appealing for help after fire destroyed thousands of photographs documenting the race, as well as those of his children growing up and of the day he was awarded an MBE. The former jockey – who was given only eight months to live by doctors two years before his Grand National heroics – was taking boxes of photographs to his publisher’s offices for them to be sorted for a new autobiography.
He stopped at the Liverpool International Horse Show, where his car got caught in a raging fire. The incident on New Year’s Eve resulted in 1,400 vehicles being destroyed in 1,000C heat. Mr Champion’s car was ‘completely obliterated’ and he is desperately appealing for anyone who has photos of his family life, career or charity work to get in touch.
‘I had spent a long time sorting out all my photographs from over the years and was taking them to my publisher,’ he said. ‘I went via the horse show in Liverpool and parked in the multistorey car park next to the arena. I had just returned to my room to get changed for dinner when I looked out of the window and saw flames billowing out of the car park.
‘I started to hear explosions as the fire reached the cars and I knew mine didn’t stand a chance. It was a while before it dawned on me that all my photographs were still in the boot.’
The memories included pictures from when he was a young boy growing up in Yorkshire, right through to winning the National on Aldaniti, to his more recent charity work. ‘They had a lot of sentimental value and I don’t have digital copies of any of them,’ he said.
‘They covered my whole life and the book will be quite empty without them.
‘It’s just one of those things. They have survived about five house moves and then they go up in flames in a car park.’
Mr Champion was awarded an MBE in the 1982 Queen’s Birthday Honours, and a year later he set up the Bob Champion Cancer Charity Trust, which has raised almost £15 million for research.
Anyone who has photographs of Mr Champion can email them to bob@fcmpublishing.co.uk