Royal honour for Nick

Professor Nick Webborn has been honoured with an OBE at Buckingham Palace.

The award was presented by the Duke of Cambridge for services to Paralympic Sports Medicine and the British Paralympic Association.

Prince William thanked him for his work and commented “and so all these medals are down to you!”

They discussed how Professor Webborn had been injured whilst in service in the Royal Air Force and how he was now helping support the work of Prince Harry in the Invictus Games.

Professor Webborn also met the newly-knighted Sir Rod Stewart and the ceremony was followed by a luncheon with family and friends at the Royal Society of Medicine.

Professor Webborn said: “It was the proudest day of my life. Driving into Buckingham Palace with your family is a bit surreal. The Royal Household staff were all so wonderful and helpful, making a very nervous occasion stress-free. I am so pleased I could share this day with all my children. I know that my parents would be looking down with great pride too.”

Professor Webborn, one of the UK’s leading sports medicine specialists with over 25 years’ experience in the area, is Medical Director of The Sussex Centre for Sport and Exercise Medicine and head of Sports Medicine at The Centre for Sport and Exercise Science and Medicine at the University of Brighton. He suffered a spinal cord injury in 1981 while a junior RAF doctor, and after an initial complete paralysis he made a partial recovery.

Based at the Sportswise centre at the university’s Eastbourne campus, Professor Webborn played wheelchair tennis for Great Britain in 2005 and continues to remain active. He works with a variety of sports at elite level, including tennis and football, but particularly with Paralympians.

He has attended nine Paralympic Games either as GB Team Physician or as a member of the International Paralympic Committee Medical Commission and the IPC Anti-Doping & Sport Subcommittees. In 2003 he became involved with the bid phase of the London 2012 Games and worked for LOCOG on the medical advisory group and at the Olympic Games as a sports physician.

Nick was the Chief Medical Officer for the British Paralympic team at London 2012. His Masters degree dissertation won the 1997 IOC World Congress on Sport Sciences award for best presentation in the biological sciences section.

Last year, Professor Webborn was named among Britain’s most influential people with a disability or health impairment for 2016 by Shaw Trust, the UK’s largest third sector provider of employment services for disabled and disadvantaged people.