sport news Jerusalem rang in the vaults of Westminster Abbey in a fitting tribute to Sir ... trends now
Sir Jackie Stewart, the last hero of the immortals of a bygone era, stated from the pulpit of Westminster Abbey that we would never look upon such a scene again.
It was a privilege to be there in the Quire on Tuesday to celebrate the life of Sir Stirling Moss, the greatest all-round motor-racing driver the world has ever known, who was a byword for sportsmanship.
There were some 2,000 congregants in the grandest of all English ‘parish’ churches, its high vaults echoing to the sound of ethereal music. Top-of-the-pops hymns, including I Vow to Thee My Country and Jerusalem resounded, as befitted a man who mostly chose the society of older, less-dominant British cars over reliable winners from the Continent.
Had he not gone down the privateer route, deploying frankly inferior machinery than European winning machines, the works teams, he would have won world championships galore, yet he uniquely inhabited a world in which he reigned regardless.
‘Everything outside London is a foreign country,’ he once said, in that faster-than-imaginable clipped English that was his trademark, redolent of the Spitfire ace he would have been had he born later than in 1929, in West Kensington, the shy son of a prosperous dentist.
Sir Stirling Moss was the greatest all-round motor-racing driver the world has ever seen
Sir Jackie Stewart, the last hero of the immortals of a bygone era, spoke from the pulpit of Westminster Abbey at the Service of Thanksgiving to honour the life and work of Moss
There were some 2,000 congregants at Westminster Abbey including The Duke of Kent
I don’t claim to have known Stirling best, though I knew him very well. Yet, I was granted a rare honour, a distinction I shall take to the grave no matter what I have done or will do in journalism. Susie, the late Lady Moss, his third wife of 40 years, made me a promise.
‘When there is any news about Stirling, I shall let you know first,’ Susie told me.
So, poaching eggs on Easter Sunday morning 2020 during lockdown, I was rung by her out of the blue. She told me that Stirling, who had been ailing from a long-endured chest infection, had died in the early hours of the morning.
The Daily Mail was the newspaper they took each day, and we were friends. We broke the news to the world. It was a sad moment I shall never forget. Then the BBC led their news bulletins with the ill-tidings.
Susie, devoted to Stirling, had nursed him through his illness, and took his cremated remains with her to bed to and to breakfast all her remaining days, until she died last year, as her family said, ‘of a broken heart’.
I had the privilege of going to see them in his incapacitated state. Susie would pour me a glass of Chardonnay, one for herself. They watched old TV programmes on the screen at the foot of his bed.
I asked him a couple of questions for posterity’s sake.
Who was his oldest friend in motor racing? Bernie Ecclestone, he told me. And what was his best Formula One win? Monaco, 1961.
Moss passed away in April 2020 at the age of 90, and was honoured with Wednesday's service
Former Formula One world champion Damon Hill, who triumphed with Williams in 1996, carries the silver trophy Moss won in Monte Carlo back in 1961 at the service on Wednesday
Yes, for three hours that day in Monaco in a Rob Walker privateer Lotus he took on and beat the might of Ferrari. The silver trophy he won in Monte Carlos was transported from its plinth on Tuesday next to the grave of the Unknown Warrior to the high altar. It was carried by Damon Hill, world champion in 1996. As were, by others, the 10 gold stars Moss won from the British Racing Drivers’ Club, and his never-to-be-forgotten white helmet.
Stewart fought for safety improvements. Stirling never had much time for that. Danger, he said, was like salt on food. Bland otherwise.
