Professor Sid Watkins, Champion of Safety

Friday, Jan 18th, 2013; On a day when the world’s media reflects on the dark side of sports medicine and its creation of false idols, it’s apposite that Formula One will instead spend a little time remembering someone who used their medical expertise to such good effect in saving and prolonging the lives of our sport’s stars.

Today’s memorial service for Professor Sid Watkins OBE in St Marylebone Parish Church, London, will be well attended by friends, family and Formula One’s senior figures. Some of those present will undoubtedly owe their lives to the step change in safety culture that ‘The Prof’ championed during a 26 year career at the helm of Formula One’s medical services. His legacy could not be more profound, for it is as a direct result of the initiatives which he championed that Formula One, a racing category which saw over 40 drivers killed in its first four and a half decades, has not witnessed a driver fatality since 1994.

Anyone who has seen the documentary SENNA will understand the impact on the sport caused by the death of the triple World Champion on May 1st 1994, and of the close relationship Watkins enjoyed with the Brazilian superstar. It was Senna’s fatality, and that of fellow driver Roland Ratzenberger the day before, which galvanised Formula One into accepting a raft of changes in which Watkins played a pivotal role.

In 30 years of travelling I have only left my passport at home on one occasion; Thursday 27th September, 1990, to be precise. I remember the date because the next day, while driving back to London’s Gatwick Airport, the news broke on BBC Radio that Lotus F1 driver Martin Donnelly has been seriously injured in a practice accident and airlifted to hospital in Seville.

Martin had been a friend since our teenage years, our mothers having been members of the same operatic society in Belfast, and we’d both achieved our objective of reaching Formula One; he as driver and me as journalist.

On landing in Gibraltar I hired a car and drove straight to Seville’s Virgen del Rioco University Hospital where I was allowed to join Martin’s fiancee in the intensive care unit where I would later meet Prof Watkins. Thrown from his disintegrating Lotus T102 when it speered off the track, Martin had suffered multiple injuries and been placed in a medically induced coma. Watkins, however, instilled confidence in us, even at that early stage; Martin would recover, he said, so long as there weren’t further complications.

His bedside manner drew on a combination of deep expertise, wisdom gathered from decades of experience and a calm, avuncular personality. Even in the darkest of moments he could help put everything in context, focusing only on the critical matters, avoiding the dramatic. His sense of humour also helped.

Martin was subsequently transferred to the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, where Watkins worked as an eminent neurosurgeon, and during the weeks which followed I had many an opportunity to talk with him. Ultimately we spent most of our time discussing a prognosis which developed in precisely the direction Sid had forecast.

Having induced Martin’s coma, and personally helped save his leg in spite of the Seville hospital’s intent on removing it, Sid asked us not to worry too much about the dramatic loss of weight, the profoundly deep, rapid breathing and severely dehydrated skin which felt cool and death-like. I have only fainted a couple of times in my life, but one of those was in the ICU at the Royal London Hospital while holding Martin Donnelly’s hand. Not something to be proud of, but I was in good company; his team mate Derek Warwick, a man of courage, had suffered the same fate during a visit.

Martin Donnelly is one of those who, along with former World Champion Mika Hakkinen, wakes up every morning knowing that the life he leads today would not have been possible without the intervention of Sid Watkins. But there are many others, those of the new generation of F1 drivers, who probably won’t be in attendance at today’s memorial service and unwittingly take for granted his legacy.

I’ll leave it to Sid’s own words to bring my little tribute to a close. Joining him in an airport lounge, with a glass of whiskey in his hand, I happened to mention that I needed to shed a few pounds thanks to the effects of a little too much Formula One corporate hospitality and too little exercise over the years.

“Don’t worry too much about that,” he smiled. “It’s important to enjoy life. I haven’t met a healthy person yet who could avoid death; I think you’ll find it’s not optional.”