A man who had a tumour removed from his spine is running a half-marathon in aid of triplets with a rare genetic disorder.

Chris Smith, who lives in Alton, will do the Kingston half-marathon on October 4 for the Fanconi Hope charity, which supports people and their families living with the life-limiting condition Fanconi Anaemia.

Fanconi Anaemia causes bone marrow failure in children and a predisposition to gynaecological, head and neck cancers, plus other complications in childhood and later life, and affects around 150 UK families.

Chris is hoping to raise £2,500 for Fanconi Hope to help his friends Chris Wise and Hannah Gurney, who live in the Portsmouth area and have two-year-old spontaneous triplets - a boy, Emil, and identical twin girls, Alba and Ava - who were all diagnosed with the condition.

Chris said: “Having triplets was a massive surprise for Chris and Hannah. Their health is a bit of a concern, and I can’t imagine how hard it is for them, but they deal with it as best they can. And the kids are amazing to be around, with their individual little characters.”

But this is no ordinary charity run, because it took the skill of a surgeon for Chris to be on his feet at all.

He said: “I’d been having quite a bit of what seemed like sciatic pain in my legs and the base of my back. I put it down to issues from running infrequently and doing a lot of driving.

“I had physiotherapy for four or five months and they thought it was possibly a slipped or bulging disc. I was having two or three showers a night trying to relieve it with heat, and sleeping in odd positions trying to relieve the pain.”

Chris went for an MRI scan which doctors hoped would confirm a bulging disc - but there was bad news.

He said: “Instead they said ‘it looks like there is a mass on the base of your spine, it looks like a spinal tumour’. That came as a massive shock after six months of being told it was a slipped disc.

“I had a call in May 2022 saying it might take radiotherapy or it may go away with time. Then I had another call from Southampton General Hospital out of the blue on a Friday saying ‘we need to remove it as soon as possible’. They couldn’t be sure if it was cancerous or not.

“My head was in a spin over the weekend and I was in hospital on the Monday for more MRIs and a brain scan to check it hadn’t spread. I had to sign a disclaimer and then had a three-hour operation.

“I came round and the first thing I did was try to move my toes. It was the biggest sense of relief I ever felt that my toes were moving.”

A biopsy eventually confirmed that the tumour was benign, and Chris made a full recovery within around two months.

Chris, 39, is married to Lucy and they have a six-year-old daughter. He has been head of communications at World Tennis for four years, although he confesses to not playing the game to “any great standard”.

He said: “Football and cricket are my main sports. This half-marathon is my first serious run. I’ve always been a bit of a hobbyist runner, doing the odd 5k to keep me ticking over, but this is the first one I’ve consciously trained for.

“I chose this particular half-marathon because my in-laws are local to Kingston, and friends have run it and said it’s a really nice event. It goes through Hampton Court and it’s all along the river, so it’s flat - which is key!

“This is my first proper physical challenge since the operation, so it would be a huge achievement for me to finish.”