A JUDO champion from Worcestershire battled back from a debilitating knee injury to win gold at an international martial arts championship.

Clive Biggs, from Bromsgrove, faced an end to his professional career when he ruptured his anterior cruciate ligament last year.

The father-of-two, who has won a plethora of bronze, silver and gold medals in international, Commonwealth and British tournaments, first noticed something was wrong after a tournament in Paris last year.

Although he tried to push on with his training, the pain continued to get worse and the 57-year-old was told surgery was the only option.

After undergoing the operation at BMI The Priory Hospital in Birmingham last October Biggs returned to work with an insurance firm in Stratford and was able to use the company’s swimming pool during his lunch hour to work on his recovery.

“By the start of this year I was working on building my hamstring strength up as well as general strength and in March started judo training very lightly with people I trusted,” he said.

“My initial target was the World Masters Championships in September but, although my fitness was building nicely, I needed to be confident and skilful and I was neither.

“I changed my target to the British Masters in October.”

Competing in the tournament in Kidderminster – a year to the day since his operation – Biggs won gold.

“I had won the same title in the two years before my injury and was delighted to win it again,” he said.

“It has been a tough year but I really have to thank everyone involved for getting me back into winning ways.”

Orthopedic surgeon Marcus Green, who operated on Biggs, said the operation involved taking tissue from a separate part of the knee and grafting it to another part to carry out the role previously filled by the ligament.

“Care was taken to choose a technique that would give him an excellent chance of great stability in the knee and minimise the risk of problems in the area where the graft was taken from,” he said.

Green added coming back from an injury such as this would be a struggle for any sportsman, but could have been career-ending for a man of Biggs’ age.

“His return to judo at the top level is a tribute to his determination and the work of his physiotherapist,” he said.