GABRIELLE Hucker has taken a big charity plunge to help her four-year-old sister - and so has dad Steve.

The pair, (pictured) from Abertillery, joined the great and the good of Welsh sport - including Graham Henry and Newport rugby star Ian Gough at a sponsored abseil and zip slide at the Millennium Stadium to help the fight against cystic fibrosis.

They and dozens of others helped raise more than £20,000 to support research into finding a cure for a disease which affects 8,000 children and young people in the United Kingdom, including four-year-old Chloe.

Mr Hucker, aged 34, said the experience - a 120-feet abseil from the stadium roof - was fantastic.

"It was a great buzz, the adrenaline rush was like nothing else, and hopefully this event will raise some money so my daughter can be cured one day," he said.

Eight-year-old Gabrielle completed the zip-slide moments before her dad, who works at LG Electronics in Newport, did both the 120-feet abseil and the zip slide.

"It was great, but it hurt a little bit," was the Abertillery Primary School pupil's comment on touching the ground. "I wasn't scared at all, it was real fun.

Chloe's life is governed by a regime of physiotherpay and medication, but she doesn't let it get her down, according to Mr Hucker.

She has to have three half-hour bouts of physiotherapy and two half-hour doses of medication every day to prevent her lungs clogging with mucus.

"She puts up with it all very well but hopefully there'll come a day when she won't have to because they'll have found a cure," said Mr Hucker.

"We knew she had cystic fibrosis a few days after she was born. "She can be in and out of hospital a lot because it can be nasty for her if she gets a cold, but it doesn't stop her doing many things.

"She was in the nursery at Abertillery school last year, she's just started school proper, and she won three first prizes at the sports day in the summer."

Until the 1970s, the prospects for cystic fibrosis sufferers were bleak, but advances in medicine now means that many live into their 40s.

The gene which causes the disease has recently been isolated by scientists and the race is now on to find a cure.

But research is costly. The Cystic Fibrosis Trust wants to raise £15 million to find a cure. The Millennium Stadium event raised more than £20,000 for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, which supports research on the condition.

Several of Mr Hucker's workmates and friends also took part and helped raise £1,700 towards the total.

"I'd like to thank them all because they've been great," he said.