Bob Champion

Bob Champion was the son of a huntsman in North Yorkshire and rode as a jump jockey from his late teens, a hard, poorly paid life of falls and broken bones. By his early thirties he was a respected professional with several hundred winners, but no one outside racing knew his name.

In July 1979 he was diagnosed with testicular cancer that had spread, and was told that without treatment he had perhaps eight months. The chemotherapy of the time was savage. He lost his hair and a great deal of weight, was sick for days after every session and at one point decided to stop the treatment and let the disease take him. What kept him going, he has said, was a horse. Aldaniti, whom he had ridden before his illness, had broken down badly in a race and had been close to being destroyed. Champion set himself the target of riding him in the Grand National.

Both of them were patched up over the winter of 1980. In April 1981 at Aintree, Aldaniti almost fell at the first fence, then went on to lead for most of the second circuit and won by four lengths. The crowd's reaction was unlike anything the race had seen. Champion retired the following year.

The Bob Champion Cancer Trust has since raised many millions of pounds for research, and the story was filmed as Champions in 1984.