TRIBUTES have been paid to a former showjumping champion and his horse trainer partner who died in a head-on smash on treacherous roads.

Tom Helliwell, 51, and his partner, Helen Burrows, 39, died when their Peugeot 309 collided with a Renault Megane on Saturday morning, while the couple were on their way to a race horse training school in Sedgefield. Ms Burrows would have been 40 yesterday.

Ms Burrows' mother Jean, 63, of Cramlington, Northumberland, said: "It is just absolutely shattering. They were such a close couple. They were known all over the country for their work with horses."

The couple's sons, Roger, 17, and Thomas, 15, face having to sell off the family's 12 horses.

Apprentice fitter Roger said: "She was a wonderful mother and he was a great dad. We are just devastated."

"He had scaled down the business when we moved down here from Ponteland.

"He was concentrating on the family, on training Thomas and I to showjump. He wanted us to follow in his footsteps."

Roger and Thomas will now go and live with their grandparents in Northumberland.