‘It was her mind I fell in love with’
Time is of the essence, motor racing hero Sir Jackie Stewart tells as he fights to save his wife from dementia
She was his original pit girl, his professional stopwatch, his ace teammate who, in pre-digital days, charted his laps to the millisecond. Sir Jackie Stewart, the three-times Formula One world champion, is recalling his wife Helen’s absolute competence on the circuit and her compassion in dealing with the practicalities when drivers all too often lost their lives.
“She was the perfect partner,” he says. “In my day, there was a two out of three chance that you would be killed. Most of our friends died. Helen had to pack for the new widow because she couldn’t face going back to the hotel room they had slept in, with the imprint still on the pillow. She did all that with very few breakdowns. Her calm under pressure was extraordinary. But the sharpness of her mind was one of the things I fell in love with, and it is her mind that is vanishing now.”
It was not easy for him to admit, earlier this month, that Lady Stewart, 75, is suffering from dementia – not least because she does not fully acknowledge that she has the disease herself. Using his formidable contacts in the worlds of motorsport and philanthropy, however, Sir Jackie has launched a charity called Race Against Dementia, because he is convinced that somewhere there is an undiscovered frustrated genius who holds the key both to prevention and cure.
“I can’t wait to find whether it’s the George Lucas or the Stephen Spielberg of medicine,” he says, “but there is somebody out there who will break new ground and find a cure for this horrendous illness. Whether that will come in time for Helen, I don’t know, but I will do all I can to help millions of people round the world avoid this heartache.”
The couple’s 54-year marriage has born two children and nine grandchildren. They met on a blind date in a café “and that was it”. At the time, Stewart was a competitive clay pigeon shooter working as an apprentice mechanic in his father’s garage in Dumbarton. His motor racing career opened up when a customer invited him to test cars at Oulton Park. “My school years were a complete disaster,” he says. “The unhappiest part of my life. The teacher told the class I was dumb, stupid, thick. In fact I was severely dyslexic. I didn’t tell Helen. She didn’t know I couldn’t read or write until I was 42.” He has no iPhone because he cannot find his name on the keyboard. “I have a dictionary on my desk but I can’t find the word in the dictionary.”
He attributes his success as a Formula One driver, in part, to the fact that he had to learn to overcome this handicap. “When you’ve got dyslexia and you find something you’re good at, you put more into it than anyone else; you can’t think the way of clever folk, so you’re always thinking out of the box.”
Sir Jackie, 77, has led a charmed life. Nicknamed “the Flying Scot”, he won 27 grands prix and three world championships without spilling a drop of blood, at a time when motor racing was a deadly sport. Thirteen of the 47 wooden benches on his 140-acre estate are dedicated to drivers who lost their lives while racing.
He is still deeply affected by the fatal crash of his former team mate François Cevert, at the US Grand Prix in 1973, covering his face with his hands as he recalls the horrific scene, barely able to speak. “He was as close a friend as we could have. I didn’t race the next day in respect. It was the most violent accident I had ever seen.” After the crash, Stewart retired one race earlier than intended and missed what would have been his 100th grand prix.
“I think Helen and I had a deeper relationship because of the terrible things that were happening when I was losing friends through the sport,” he says. “She came to every race. We shared the grief as much as the exhilaration. When I look back on it now, I’m surprised she didn’t have more complications in her life.”
Lady Stewart was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia two and a half years ago, when the family had their annual health check-up at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. “Looking back, we noticed that if she got angry – and she didn’t often get angry – she was more angry than she’d ever been. She was being more critical of some people she knew well. Her long-term memory is untouched but her shortterm memory is very poor. That is where the frustration lies.”
She is a naturally glamorous woman who can still host parties, where the conversation often tends to be about the past, but her condition is gradually deteriorating. Sir Jackie suspects that, for all her fighting spirit, she has begun to acknowledge her illness. He has built a four-bedroomed annexe to their house in Buckinghamshire in anticipation of the day when she will need 24-hour care. At the moment, there are two carers, working alternate three-week shifts.
“Here we are, living like this,” he crash in the Belgian Grand Prix in 1966, Sir Jackie became a passionately outspoken racing safety advocate, and the success of his controversial crusade is perhaps his greatest legacy. “I would have been a much more popular world champion if I had always said what people wanted to hear,” he says. “I might have been dead, but definitely more popular.”
If he can “crack” the dementia code, it will be an even bigger contribution to human survival. He is putting together a technical team of dementia experts who are unconstrained by convention and share his sense of urgency. His aim is to apply the pioneering technological spirit of motor racing to researching a cure. Among his backers are the advertising guru Sir Martin Sorrell, David Mayhew, chairman of Alzheimer’s Research UK, and the philanthropist Dame Vivien Duffield. He has given £1 million of his own money to get the crusade going.
“In the last 25 years, billions have been spent on dementia research. I am not in any way detracting from what others do but I’ve got to find something faster.” The man who spent his career in pursuit of speed is now, aged 77, engaged in the most furious race of his life.