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| CHAMP CONQUERS CANCER TO CARRY ON RACING |
If Tour de France hero Lance Armstrong's story of conquering cancer wasn't enough, there are many others we never hear about. Here is such a story from the Midlands of the UK. During the mid eighties, James Varnish raced cycle speedway for Birmingham,Wednesfield and Great Britain winning 5 national titles.
In 1985, he raced in Australia and won both the Australian and World Championships. Following this he returned back to Australia to race and coach, and more importantly to secure my career in sales and sales management, which I still do where he is currently employed within the Worldcom organisation.
Despite working, he continued to race bikes and coach (road racing and track racing) for my local club Halesowen (www.halesowencycling.net) and also get married, now with 3 daughters.
In November 1999, James was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma (Cancer of the Lymph gland). I'll let James take up the story. "Obviously at that point, my life seemed shattered, given all my responsibilities and previous sporting achievements. However, I following a rigorous course of chemotherapy and radiography, and then started to rebuild my life in all aspects.
Given the help and support from the doctors, family and friends last year, I competed and won the club sprint and pursuit medals, (my daughter also won a sprint medal) and I am now embarking on my "second racing career". I am now training hard to race again for the coming season. I also gained a massive amount of motivation from the Lance Armstrong story (www.laf.org) that still continues today."
As well as all this, Steve is a L2 BCF coach, coaching the senior racing members of Halesowen CC. He also now has a message to send out based on his life threatening expereinces. Post cancer treatment, he tries to help out as much as he can doing work in the Cancer community, mentoring and fund raising,and in addition to this, his wife Helen is also competing in the London Marathon to raise money for Leukemia research.
His final message is simply to raise awareness of this type situation which is very important to today's society.
� British Cycling 2002/2003
