Doddie Weir to receive Helen Rollason award at BBC SPOTY for fight against Motor Neuron Disease

Former Scotland rugby player Doddie Weir will be honoured with the Helen Rollason award at Sunday’s BBC Sports Personality of the Year ceremony for his remarkable charity work in fighting Motor Neuron Disease (MND).

After winning 61 caps for Scotland and touring South Africa with the British and Irish Lions in 1997, Weir rose to the top of the international game before retiring in 2004. But 12 years later, Weir was diagnosed with MND and promptly set up the My Name’5 Doddie Foundation to tackle his own frustrations with the lack of options given to sufferers.

Since setting up the Foundation – which uses the shirt number that Weir wore throughout his career with Borders, Newcastle, Scotland and the Lions as well as amateur Scottish sides Stewart’s Melville and Melrose – Weir has helped engage with leading neuroscientists, professors and medical researchers to better understand MND and work towards finding a cure, investing more than £4m and donating nearly £1m to families affected by MND.

Having been awarded an OBE earlier this year, Weir will on Sunday receive the coveted Helen Rollason that recognises outstanding achievement in the face of adversity, having been named after the late BBC journalist and presenter who died in 1999 after a battle with cancer.

"I am honoured and humbled to receive the Helen Rollason award at this year's Sports Personality of the Year, especially when I look back at the remarkable individuals who have been recognised over the years,” said Weir.

“My family and I are very much looking forward to attending the awards evening and celebrating another fantastic sporting year with friends and many of our sporting heroes."

Weir was told upon his diagnosis that he would be in a wheelchair within a year, but continues to defy those predictions in an attempt to live his life to the full.

Director of BBC Sport Barbara Slater said: “Doddie is an incredible recipient of this year’s Helen Rollason award. To come to terms with his own life changing diagnosis and channel his energy into raising over £4m to research the condition and a possible cure is nothing short of extraordinary.”

The BBC will also broadcast Doddie Weir: One More Try on BBC One this Saturday at 1:15pm, with the hour-long documentary detailing the rugby great’s diagnosis and the subsequent battle to come to terms to it for him and his family, leading up to the point that he was presented with his OBE from the Queen.