Latest news with #RaceAgainstDementia
Daily Record
19-06-2025
- Automotive
- Daily Record
Sir Jackie Stewart's hometown marks 60th anniversary of his first Formula 1 Grand Prix win
Hundreds of people joined in the fun at Levengrove Park to honour the iconic Dumbarton hero's first ever win. Hundreds gathered at a park in Dumbarton to mark the 60th anniversary of the legendary Formula 1 driver Sir Jackie Stewart's first race victory. The celebration was held at Levengrove Park to honour the iconic Dumbarton hero's first ever win. The park was buzzing with excitement as visitors took on the 1965m Grand Prix Walk – a special tribute to the year Sir Jackie took his first F1 Grand Prix win in Monza, Italy. Sir Jackie was first to see the checkered flag ahead of Graham Hill and Dan Gurney. The three-time Formula 1 world champion was born and raised in Milton, West Dunbartonshire, before going on to claim the drivers' championship in 1969, 1971 and 1973. Local residents, school pupils and care home residents joined the fun, with a surprise appearance from Sir Jackie's 1969 F1 World Champion trophy. Representatives from Alzheimer Scotland and the ever-lovable Buddy the Bear also joined in the celebration. A host of motorsport organisations also attended, including: The Jim Clark Trust; Veterans of Scottish Motor Sport; Tyrrell Racing Organisation; and Scottish Motor Racing Club. The event also helped shine a spotlight on Race Against Dementia, the charity founded by Sir Jackie in support of his wife, Lady Helen. Back in April, Sir Jackie revealed the heartbreaking moment his dementia-stricken wife of 60 years forgot who he was. Lady Helen, 84, was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia in 2014. Sir Jackie, 85, said at that time: 'Just the other day it was time for dinner, she's getting up and I'm sitting close by, and she says, 'Where's Jackie?' That's the first time that's happened and that's only a few weeks ago.' Sir Jackie said his wife is the reason he founded Race Against Dementia, which is funding a blood test trial developed by the University of Cambridge. The trial hopes to detect early signs of frontotemporal dementia. Sir Jackie also spoke of how 'sundowning' – a common side-effect of the disease which sees the sufferer become more agitated later in the day as their brain becomes more tired – is affecting Lady Helen. He said: 'I know that Helen doesn't mean it when she suddenly goes round and hits me, or the nurses. 'She can hit somebody quite often, she uses language that she's never ever said in her life and it comes like that [clicks his fingers] and I say, 'Darling, darling, don't say that'. She says 'Why?' And she'll give me a row for doing that. That's usually after 5pm.' Sir Jackie previously outlines his desire to see a cure for the disease discovered while he is still around to see it happen. He added: 'When you have a problem in Formula 1 [clicks his fingers] it's fixed... they're also changing [technology] all the time, because they have enthusiasm and they see the results. 'I want this to happen just as much as I wanted to be world champion - it's terribly important.' To help fund their lifesaving research you can donate to the charity by visiting
Telegraph
07-06-2025
- Sport
- Telegraph
Extortion, tasteless stunts and malign forces – the endless fascination with Michael Schumacher
As soon as the initials 'MS' appeared on a white race helmet, it felt like a message from the void. For nearly 12 years even the faintest update on Michael Schumacher had arrived second-hand at best, but here, at last, was a signature purportedly by the man himself. Sir Jackie Stewart, for whose Race Against Dementia charity the gesture was made, could not conceal his joy that the helmet – adorned with the Royal Stewart tartan and worn across a career spanning the Scot's three Formula One titles – had now been signed by all 20 living world champions. The wider significance, however, was that it represented the closest connection yet to an icon removed from public view, at once a precious affirmation of his survival but also a reminder of his desperate condition, truly an anguish without end. 'A wonderful moment,' said Johnny Herbert, Schumacher's former Benetton team-mate, on seeing those two surprise letters in black marker pen. 'We haven't seen something emotional like this in years, and hopefully it's a sign Michael is on the mend. It has been a long, horrible journey for the family, and maybe we'll see him in the F1 paddock soon.' Herbert's sentiments testify to the power of hope. While well-intentioned, they are negated by all available evidence. Since Schumacher struck his head on a rock while skiing in Méribel in December 2013, suffering such devastating brain trauma that he was placed in a coma for 250 days, he has made no public appearance of any kind. The likelihood, given the gravity of his injuries and wife Corinna's insistence on absolute privacy, is that he will never be seen by the wider world again. The effect of the family's scrupulous discretion is twofold. On the one hand, they have created a ring of steel around Schumacher, to the point where nobody can state with certainty even where he is being treated. As Corinna has put it: 'Michael always protected us, and now we are protecting Michael.' But the dearth of official health updates has bred a fascination so intense that the most elaborate fictions can masquerade as fact. In 2023, Die Aktuelle, a German women's interest weekly, ran a strapline promising 'Schumacher: the first interview', only for it to be disclosed at the end of the article that the quotes were generated by artificial intelligence. The publishers had to pay £170,000 in compensation, while the editor was fired. Today the only semblance of access to Schumacher's situation comes via his former inner circle in the sport. Just this week, Flavio Briatore, the irrepressible figure instrumental in his mid-Nineties glories at Benetton, offered an unusual level of detail, appearing to indicate the seven-time champion was bed-bound. 'If I close my eyes,' he told Corriere della Sera, 'I see him smiling after a victory. I prefer to remember him like that rather than him just lying on a bed. Corinna and I talk often, though.' Sabine Kehm, the Schumacher family's spokeswoman, did not respond to a request for comment. But Briatore's policy is one that Bernie Ecclestone, the sport's former ringmaster, has also adopted. While he is still in touch with Corinna, he clarified as early as 2015 that he would not be paying house visits, preferring to cherish the memory of the Michael he knew. Asked if this feeling remained the same a decade on, he replied: 'Absolutely. A hundred per cent.' Briatore's intervention came after his ex-wife, Elisabetta Gregoraci, said in 2020: 'Michael doesn't speak, he communicates with his eyes. Only three people can visit him and I know who they are.' Who are the three? Two we can identify with confidence are Jean Todt and Ross Brawn, the team principal and technical director during Schumacher's all-conquering years at Ferrari. Gerhard Berger, who went from being the German's fierce adversary to a close friend – and who, by eerie coincidence, broke his arm skiing off-piste just 10 weeks after that fateful Méribel morning – is understood to be the third. Brawn has spent time on several occasions with Schumacher at his vast house in Gland, Switzerland, on the shores of Lake Geneva, cementing an unbreakable bond. He has provided the odd expression of optimism, saying in 2016 that the driver was showing 'encouraging signs' of recovery and that he was 'extremely hopeful we'll see Michael as we knew him at some point in the future'. Todt has long been the most frequent guest, welcomed by the family around twice a month. He has given a few more specifics, divulging that he and Schumacher have watched F1 races together on television. The Frenchman's reflections – which, despite their tenderness, acknowledge that 'there's no longer the same communication as before' – supports Gregoraci's suggestion that Schumacher is non-verbal. There is further corroboration from Felix Görner, a presenter with German broadcaster RTL and once the driver's frequent paddock companion. 'He is a person dependent on caregivers, who can no longer express himself through language,' he said recently. 'It's a very sad state of affairs. He was actually a hero, an indestructible hero. We're just clinging to hope, to a straw. But he's simply not well, so we won't see him again.' In many ways, Corinna's ability to sustain the official omertà around her husband is extraordinary. In 2019, the policy was tested to the limit by confirmation of their son Mick's elevation to the F1 ranks. But throughout his two seasons at the summit, inhabiting the most oppressive goldfish bowl in sport, Kehm acted on Corinna's behalf to ensure that he was never lured into any unwitting bulletin about Michael. The same hyper-vigilance has extended to the couple's daughter Gina. At her wedding last October to partner Iain Bethke, held inside the Schumachers' lavish Majorcan villa, guests reportedly had their phones confiscated to prevent the leaking of any images or videos. This still failed to stop accounts surfacing in Germany that Michael had attended the ceremony – reports since rubbished by Herbert as 'A1 fake news'. That said, the Schumacher link to the Balearic island is well-established. Spanish newspapers indicated in 2020 that Corinna had moved Michael on a more permanent basis to a property in Port d'Andratx, formerly owned by Real Madrid president Florentino Pérez, as she began a gradual relocation from their Swiss home. But even the particulars of this arrangement are fiercely guarded, with the family's precise division of time between Majorca and Switzerland kept secret so as to deter fans and paparazzi from prying on the houses. You can understand the reasons for reticence. In some quarters, the obsession with Michael's situation has long since gone from ghoulish to outright criminal. The Schumachers are still reeling from a trial earlier this year that culminated in three men being found guilty of a £12.5 million plot to blackmail them. Yilmaz Tozturkan, a nightclub bouncer, received a three-year prison sentence after he, with his IT expert son Daniel Lins and Schumacher's former bodyguard Markus Fritsche, had threatened to upload 1,500 pictures and videos of Michael, as well as confidential medical records, on the dark web unless they were paid the money. The material had been stolen from a computer and given to Fritsche, who passed it to Tozturkan at a cafe. Both Tozturkan and Lins had claimed to be offering the family a 'business deal'. Before the verdict was announced, Tozturkan said: 'I'm very sorry and ashamed for what I have done. It was a very disgusting thing. I take full responsibility.' During the trial, the Schumachers had voiced worries that one hard drive containing sensitive photos had not been recovered, despite several searches of the defendants' residences. Thilo Damm, their lawyer, confirmed their plan to appeal against the 'lenient' punishment, saying: 'We don't know where the missing hard drive is. So there is the possibility of another threat through the back door.' Kehm, the first witness called, gave an insight into the acute anxieties inside the Schumacher camp around breaches of trust. 'I got a call, and it was a number we didn't recognise, so at first we didn't answer,' she told the court in Wuppertal. 'But it kept calling and calling, so in the end I answered, and it was a man who said he had pictures of Michael, that if the family didn't want them published he could help. We would have to pay €15 million. He said the money was for the pictures and his go-between service.' In Corinna and the long-serving Kehm, at his side since joining as his personal press officer in 1999, Michael has two formidably effective gatekeepers. Now that he is seemingly no longer in a position to dictate his wishes, the two women unswervingly loyal to him exercise them on his behalf, upholding his long-held principle that his private life is off-limits. 'We are getting on with our lives,' she explained in the 2021 Netflix documentary Schumacher, the only interview she has given since the day of horror in the French Alps. ''Private is private,' as he always said.' Theirs was always a strong marriage, even under the stresses of the F1 hamster-wheel. Michael once said of Corinna, a celebrated equestrienne who became a European champion in Western-style horse riding: 'We share the same values. During all the time I was racing, she was my guardian angel.' Still, you cannot help but wonder at the toll that the tragedy of Michael's circumstances has wrought on his wife's wellbeing. Eddie Jordan, who died in March but who had given Schumacher his first F1 chance, recruiting him to his eponymous team in 1991, did not shy away from a view on the subject. Having known Corinna since before she married Michael, he said in 2023: 'This was the most horrific situation. Corinna has not been able to go to a party, to lunch or this or that – she's like a prisoner, because everyone would want to talk to her about Michael when she doesn't need reminding of it every minute.' Schumacher accumulated a vast fortune as the most decorated driver of his era, with a net worth estimated at £450 million. Clearly, this has cushioned the financial impact of the bills for his round-the-clock medical care. But money is a frippery when set against the nightmare that his accident has unleashed. At one level, there is the sorrow that Schumacher has apparently shown no progress to report, with the extent of his injuries – diagnosed at the time as cerebral contusion and oedema – causing terminal damage. At another, there is the constant concern that the carefully-maintained silence around his day-to-day life could be upended by malign forces. As gruelling as this year's court case proved, it was not the first time the family had been targeted by unscrupulous opportunists. Even as Schumacher lay fighting for his life in a hospital bed in Grenoble, just eight days after his ski crash descending the Combe de Saulire, a journalist sought to gain entry to his private room by posing as a priest. 'I wouldn't have ever imagined something like this could happen,' said a furious Kehm. Each time that a gross violation of privacy occurs, the culprit is full of contrition. Just as Tozturkan admitted his extortion attempt was a 'disgusting' act, Bianca Pohlmann, managing director of Funke – the company behind the notorious AI article in Die Aktuelle – apologised for the 'tasteless and misleading' stunt. And yet the pattern keeps repeating, with the voracious global appetite to learn more about Schumacher naturally hardening a resolve among his protectors to give nothing. Willi Weber, his ex-manager, has been critical of this circumspect approach, previously accusing the Schumachers of 'not telling the whole truth' about Michael and urging them to 'pour pure wine for his millions of fans'. At this stage, any such urgings are redundant. What remains of Michael's life will unfold according to Corinna's prescription, where, to whatever degree possible, he can feel the strength of the family bond, and where she and their two children can, in turn, map out their lives without prurient intrusion. It is worth asking whether that white helmet, now the pride of the Sir Jackie Stewart collection, should mark the end of the intrigue. There is something intensely poignant about seeing the addition of that 'MS' beneath the visor. It is as much as we had any right to expect, and as much as he is ever likely to provide. On the surface, it might look insignificant, with even Stewart conceding that it had needed the guiding hand of Corinna to produce. But the weight of its symbolism is profound, signifying that Schumacher, now 56 years old and the figure by whom all other champions are judged, is still with us, still capable of communicating through his touch. In an otherwise shattering tale, it is the one consolation to which we can cling.
Daily Record
28-05-2025
- Health
- Daily Record
Dementia warning as craving certain foods 'could be a sign of the disease'
Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is one of the rare forms of dementia and can cause patients to crave sweet, fatty foods, or carbohydrates and even forget their table manners A hankering for certain food could be an early warning sign of dementia, experts have warned. Dementia is a broad term used to describe a variety of conditions that cause memory loss, with Alzheimer's disease being the most prevalent type. Vascular dementia accounts for the majority of other cases. However, there are also less common forms of dementia, one of which is known as frontotemporal dementia (FTD). This condition can lead to behavioural and language difficulties, and may even change a person's preferred food choices. Alzheimer's UK, a leading charity, explains that FTD patients may "crave sweet, fatty foods, or carbohydrates and forget their table manners". They added: "They may also no longer know when to stop eating, drinking alcohol, or smoking." Dementia is the leading cause of death in the UK, claiming the lives of approximately 67,000 people across the four nations each year. In an effort to raise awareness and accelerate scientific progress towards a cure, Scottish Formula One driver Sir Jackie Stewart founded Race Against Dementia after his wife was diagnosed with FTD in 2014. The charity is optimistic about the development of a new treatment for the disease within the next decade, according to scientist Dr Cara Croft. It is through that initiative that Sir Jackie is helping to fund a new trial at the University of Cambridge which hopes to spot signs of the disease in people many years before it ever begins to have an effect. In more than a decade since her diagnosis, however, Lady Helen's dementia has steadily progressed over time. And Sir Jackie, 85, previously recounted how his wife of more than 60 years forgot who he was. Speaking in 2022, he told the BBC: 'Just the other day it was time for dinner, she's getting up and I'm sitting close by, and she says, 'Where's Jackie?' That's the first time that's happened and that's only a few weeks ago. 'A bad feeling came over me.' He went on to say that his wife's mind is in 'a new world' and that she is now no longer able to walk on her own as a result of her condition. What are the symptoms of frontotemporal dementia (FTD)? As well as changes in eating habits, other symptoms of FTD include: Being insensitive or rude Acting impulsively Loss of inhibitions Seeming subdued Losing interest in people and things Losing drive and motivation Inability to emphasis with others Repetitive behaviours Compulsive eating Neglecting personal hygiene Using words incorrectly Loss of vocabulary Repeating a limited number of phrases Forgetting the meaning of common words
BBC News
18-05-2025
- Automotive
- BBC News
Fangio helmet auction for Sir Jackie Stewart's dementia charity
A rare replica of the helmet worn by Formula 1 champion Juan Manuel Fangio is being auctioned to raise funds for Sir Jackie Stewart's Jackie founded Race Against Dementia after his wife was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia in helmet was donated by the Foundacion Fangio Museo, and is being actioned by Northamptonshire-based F1 Authentics."Fangio was my hero. However, he wasn't just my hero, he was a close friend, a true gentleman and someone I respected immensely," Sir Jackie said. Race Against Dementia aims to help research into a cure for dementia, and is funding a new blood test trial developed by the University of study hopes to detect signs of frontotemporal dementia decades before it replica helmet features the original style used by the racing drivers during the early years of F1. It is 75 years since the first F1 Grand Prix and World Championship, and the auction will coincide with the Monaco Grand Prix at the end of the month, which Fangio won in won five championships and became a mentor to Sir Jackie, who went on to win Jackie said: "The Fangio helmet was gifted to me and I hope it will represent our friendship, and all that the great man stood for."To me, he remains the greatest driver of all time." Follow Northamptonshire news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
Daily Mail
01-05-2025
- Health
- Daily Mail
Scientists are using living human brain tissue to study Alzheimer's on their hunt for a cure - and experts are expecting a breakthrough
British scientists have used the tissue of a living human brain to mimic the early stages of Alzheimer's disease, in a study which will boost the search for a cure. The team from the University of Edinburgh used the healthy brain tissue from living NHS patients and exposed it to a protein linked to Alzheimer's, from patients who passed away from it. In a stunning scientific leap, researchers unlocked a rare chance to watch dementia take hold in human brain cells and experts believe this game-changing method could fast-track drug testing and crank up the odds of finally finding a cure. The study involved using tiny fragments of healthy brain tissue from cancer patients while they underwent routine surgery to remove tumours at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. Once the pieces were collected, they were put into glass bottles with oxygenated artificial spinal fluid and taken into labs where they were sliced into thin pieces, less than a third of a millimetre thick and were kept in incubators to replicate the body temperature. Scientists then took the deadly amyloid beta straight from the brains of Alzheimer's victims and unleashed it on healthy brain tissue in the lab and watched as the disease developed. It was found that the brain did not try to repair the damage caused by the toxic protein, and even small changes were enough to disrupt brain cells. This will help scientists in their race to find a cure to the disease, and according to the leader of the experiment, it is bringing the scientific community 'one step closer' to finding a cure for it. Dr Claire Durrant said: 'We believe this tool could help accelerate findings from the lab into patients, bringing us one step closer to a world free from the heartbreak of dementia. 'These findings are a testament to the incredible support of my funders and the hard work of my team members Dr Robert McGeachan and Dr Soraya Meftah, who led on the experiments.' Sir Jackie Stewart OBE, founder of Race Against Dementia, which has supported Dr Durrant's laboratory since 2019 said: 'It's a horrendous reality that as things stand, one in three people born today, will die with dementia. 'Someone develops dementia every three seconds – and we still don't have a cure. I created Race Against Dementia to challenge this awful disease in the fullest sense. 'Our collaboration across industries allows us to think more keenly and faster, and the breakthrough that we have achieved shows what is possible when science moves faster, with new tools and fresh thinking. 'Our unique program is enabling us to test potential treatments which are bringing us closer to a world without dementia. I am sure that for you, like me, that cannot happen soon enough.' Professor Tara Spires-Jones, Group Leader at the UK Dementia Research Institute at the University of Edinburgh said: 'This important work by Dr Durrant's team brings a new tool to scientists' toolbox to better understand Alzheimer's disease and how to treat it. 'The use of living human tissue samples generously donated by people undergoing surgery to remove brain tumours allows scientists to probe how living human brain reacts to toxic proteins produced in Alzheimer's, and in future will allow testing of whether new treatments are effective in human brain. 'This cutting-edge study is an example of how the UK Dementia Research Institute is at the forefront of global efforts to understand and treat Alzheimer's.'
