An Evening with Sir Jackie Stewart was the inaugural fundraising auction and gala dinner for the three-time Formula One world champion’s charity, Race Against Dementia. The spectacular affair was graced by Minister for Trade and Industry Mr S Iswaran and Y.A.M Tunku Ismail Idris, and featured the who’s who of both Singaporean and Southeast Asian business and social circles. The guest of honour was racing legend Sir Jackie Stewart himself, and the auction raised over $150,000 to fund breakthrough and innovative dementia research.

Racing Against Dementia with Sir Jackie Stewart

Jackie Stewart or formally, Sir John Young Stewart, OBE was a Scottish Formula One racing driver who competed between 1965 and 1973 winning three World Drivers’ Championships while coming in twice over nine racing seasons. Ranked 5th of 50 greatest Formula One drivers of all time, Stewart held the record for most wins by a Formula One driver for 14 years until another racing legend, Alain Prost, overtook Stewart’s 27 record wins. Jackie “The Flying Scot” is considered one of the greatest figures in motor sport of our lifetime. But, Stewart would not get to ride off into a happy ending, not entirely, three years ago, his wife, Lady Helen Stewart, was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia.

With impaired mobility and malfunctioning short term memory, Lady Stewart no longer remembers where her husband is at most times and requires round-the-clock care support to help with everyday tasks, it’s a medical-care expense which Sir Jackie Stewart is intimately aware that only a man of his means is capable of supporting, and not everyone can be as financially well off as a legendary Formula One driver.

 

The pair had fallen in love when Sir Jackie was just a local mechanic with nary a penny to him name until Formula One success catapulted the two into the sport’s glamourous world at the height of the Swinging Sixties. Now, Sir Jackie could have followed in the same vein as other polyamorous drivers of the era but he did not – instead, they became Formula One’s “Golden Couple”.

“The love of my life for over 60 years slipping away…” – Sir Jackie Stewart to attendees at An Evening with Jackie Stewart

The F1 legend and Rolex brand ambassador, refusing to surrender, has set up charity, Race Against Dementia, in bid to find cure of dementia within his wife’s lifetime. Not many relationships can last 60 years and LUXUO prays that the $150,000 helps Sir Jackie Stewart’s bid to cure dementia before he loses the love of his life to time as well and this is one race, we hope Sir Jackie wins.