NEIL Crompton has given an update on his health for the first time since revealing his prostate cancer diagnosis earlier this year.
The 61-year-old voice of Supercars received the diagnosis in April in the lead-up to the Tasmania SuperSprint and made the news public after The Bend SuperSprint in May.
Crompton underwent surgery and stepped back from his commentary roles for the Darwin and Townsville 500 rounds, but filmed segments for the Townsville SuperSprint and returned to the host desk for the Supercars Eseries last month.
He joined this week’s episode of the V8 Sleuth Podcast powered by Repco ahead of the release of his autobiography Neil Crompton: Best Seat in the House, scheduled hit stores later this month and currently available for pre-order in the V8 Sleuth Bookshop.
Discussing his prostate cancer diagnosis, Crompton confirmed he is going “very well” and described his progress as a “tremendous outcome.”
“[The] operation went well, the aftermath’s going well,” Crompton surmised on the V8 Sleuth Podcast powered by Repco.
Listen to the full episode in the player below.
“[I’m] not 100 percent healthy right now, frankly, but very close to it. There’s still a few little things that I’m navigating around, but [I’ve got] an unbelievable team of doctors.
“There’s an ongoing monitoring to make sure that it stays that way; you’re never 100 percent out of the woods.
“There was a pretty frightening time, quite frankly.
“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.”
Crompton also expressed his appreciation for the outpouring of support from fans and the Supercars community after making his diagnosis public.
“The response and the support and the messages of care and love and concern were really uplifting,” Crompton 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 [it was also] 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’ve expressed that, and it’s a really lovely thing.”
In the podcast, Crompton also shares a couple of stories from his career behind the wheel and behind the microphone, ranging from Peter Brock to Dame Edna, touring car legends to Indycar testing – and you can even hear a snippet of one of his earliest pieces of TV commentary!
