LAWYERS for a disabled sports star who has been diagnosed with terminal cancer are trying to trace his former work colleagues as they investigate his working conditions.

Joe Lawrence has mesothelioma - a terminal cancer caused by exposure to asbestos - and a legal team is trying to find out how much protection he was given from asbestos exposure during his working life.

The 71-year-old was paralysed in 1984 when he fell from a balcony at a block of Bradford flats.

He lost the use of his legs, but went on to win a gold medal at Britain's National Wheelchair Championships in 1986. He was also took a national spinal injuries javelin title at the Seoul Olympics in 1988.

In the late 1990s, Mr Lawrence joined the Pinderfields Paraplegic Fellowship Club to pass on his sporting skills to youngsters and adults in Dakar, Bangladesh, raising money to help disabled people play sport.

In 2001 he was awarded an MBE for services to wheelchairs sports.

Last March, he went for routine surgery for a stoma bag to be fitted, but there were complications. It was during his stay in hospital the presence of asbestos fibres were first diagnosed in his lungs. In October he was diagnosed with mesothelioma.

Mr Lawrence, of Thornbury, said: "My wife, Jean and I, were shocked and devastated by my diagnosis and are struggling to come to terms with it. I have always been fit and healthy throughout my life and enjoyed an active lifestyle."

He worked for several companies across West Yorkshire during his working life, but he believes he might have been exposed to asbestos at three companies - Foster Wheeler Limited in Huddersfield between 1968 to 1970, the North Eastern Gas Board in the 1970s, which became British Gas, and L B Holliday & Co in Huddersfield in the late 1970s, which was sold on in the early 1980s.

His work included welding and cleaning boilers and converting gas supplies.

Mr Lawrence said: "I never knew that the work that I did so many years about would affect my life now.

"I really hope that my former work colleagues will now help the team at Irwin Mitchell to give any information about the conditions that I worked in so my family and I can get the justice that I deserve."

Nicola Handley, a specialist industrial disease lawyer at Irwin Mitchell’s Leeds office, said: "Mesothelioma is an aggressive and incurable cancer which causes so much distress for victims like Joseph who worked in industries where asbestos was regularly used."

She said she hoped Mr Lawrence's former co-workers would get in touch as soon as possible to share their experiences of working conditions.

Anyone with information is asked to e-mail nicola.handley@irwinmitchell.com or call 0113 220 6233.