Supercars icon Neil Crompton has revealed he would have been dead within five years had his prostate cancer not been “accidentally” discovered.
The ‘Voice of Supercars’ missed two rounds of this year’s championship to undergo surgery, after he was diagnosed earlier this year. He’s now back behind the microphone.
Speaking to the V8 Sleuth Podcast, Crompton revealed how bad things might have been.
“[I’m] not 100 per cent healthy right now, frankly, but very close to it,” he said.
“There’s still a few little things that I’m navigating around, but [I’ve got] an unbelievable team of doctors.
“A little footnote in the pathology from it all – had we not accidentally tripped over what happened – I would’ve been dead somewhere between a year and five years from now.”
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The 61-year-old twice finished on the podium at the Bathurst 1000 during his career, in 1992 and 1995, and was a former teammate of the legendary Peter Brock.
“[The] operation went well, the aftermath’s going well,” he explained.
“There’s an ongoing monitoring to make sure that it stays that way; you’re never 100 per cent out of the woods.
“It was a pretty frightening time, quite frankly.
Describing himself as the last of the Mohicans without social media, Crompton nonetheless revealed he’d been blown away by the support from the Supercars community and fans.
“The response and the support and the messages of care and love and concern were really uplifting,” he said.
“It’s hard to actually find the right words that don’t sound like you’re just reading off the script, but it was a seismic shift in my life and a hell of a wake-up call of how dramatically sideways things can go.
“But, a beautiful reckoning that whatever I’ve done – good, bad or indifferent in motorsport – and I won’t be everybody’s cup of tea, but there’s certainly some people out there that have enjoyed my work and they expressed that, and it’s a really lovely thing.”
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