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Beefy walks to save more lives
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| STEPPING FORWARD: Sir Ian Botham with leukaemia sufferers, Jack Burnett, five, and Rachel Smith, seven, in London to promote his latest fundraising walk, Beefy's Great British Walk Against Childhood Leukaemia, which takes place in nine towns across the UK from October 10-18 |
HE SAID he'd never do it again. But Sir Ian Botham couldn't resist going in to bat against the old enemy - child leukaemia - so he's back on the road, walking to raise funds for research into the blood cancer.
This week he announced his 12th marathon walk and this time you can pay to go with him. For a minimum sponsorship of £250 you can join Beefy for parts of his journey, which will take in towns from Taunton, Tunbridge Wells, Stratford and all the way up to Milngavie in Scotland. Five hundred £10 places are available on each leg of the walk, too.
When he hobbled into Taunton's Musgrove Park Hospital in 1977, to get a foot X-ray, Botham couldn't have known how his life would change.
The cricketing legend took a wrong turning and found himself in a room with four youngsters. They got chatting and Botham, a father himself, was devastated to learn that they had leukaemia and would all die from the disease.
He stumped up £50 on the spot to pay for a party for them but for Botham, it wasn't enough.
"I said to my wife, Kath, There must be something we can do to prevent this illness,' and it became a personal crusade," he says.
Back then, a child who contracted leukaemia only had a 20 per cent chance of survival. Now, 12 walks and 31 years on, the odds have been turned on their head: 80 per cent of children survive.
And while he's too modest to say it, his supporters and the medics will tell you that much of that is down to the research funded by the money Botham has raised.
"I can remember Douglas Osborne, the chief executive of Leukaemia Research, telling me it would be sensational' if we raised £100,000 from our first walk in 1985," says Botham.
"I believe we collected £1.1 million."
His walks took him from Land's End to John O'Groats, in the footsteps of Hannibal across the Alps and even into Poole!
Sue Rae, who, like Botham, is a lifelong fund-raiser for Leukaemia Research in East Dorset, says: "Ian Botham is an inspiration to us fundraisers and to patients, too.
"I got involved after my brother's little girl Elizabeth died of leukaemia and that was in the early 1970s. All those years ago when it was a pretty hopeless diagnosis, no one expected really to survive. If we were honest with ourselves, you always live in hope but in those days you knew it was only a matter of time."
Elizabeth died in 1971 aged just five years. She had contracted leukaemia when she was two-and-a-half.
Mrs Rae says: "There are so many different types of leukaemia and in those days they tried what they could but you were virtually a guinea pig. There was no bone marrow transplant or anything like that. Now they can differentiate between all those types and 80 per cent will survive."
Sir Ian Botham is even more optimistic.
"With the necessary funding I'm told we can raise the bar to 95 per cent in the next 10 years. I won't stop until there is a 100 per cent cure but I need the public's help."
And Sue Rae agrees.
"There are so many charities competing for money it becomes harder each year to raise what we need," she says.
"There is no government help, it's all down to the public which is why Ian Botham is so fantastic. People listen to him and he helps raise awareness."
He certainly does.
When he was knighted last year, Botham chatted to the Queen about the Leukaemia Research Fund.
He's reported to have personally raised £10m and, says Sue Rae: "There are young men and women who are alive today directly because of Ian Botham. I've met him and he is larger than life with a huge personality. We are so lucky to have him."
If you want to join Beefy log on to ianbothamwalk.com. But don't worry if you can't. You can still join him in spirit by signing up for the Forget Me Not Walk through Bournemouth on June 15. Entrants celebrate at the finish with a delicious cream tea, which is included in the entry fee of £7.50.
To enter, contact Melissa Houston on 020 7269 9063, email walk@lrf.org.uk or visit forgetmenotwalks.com Find out how you can help East Dorset Leukaemia Research by mailing suer1628@aol.com
7:00pm Sunday 11th May 2008
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