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The 2007 Team Sarcoma Initiative is an internationally coordinated set of events to raise awareness of sarcoma and raise funds to support sarcoma research, clinical trials, and patient and family services. Each year, one of the Team Sarcoma events, which we call the "core" Team Event, is a bike tour. We use bike tours to help achieve some of our goals because of Liddy. Liddy was an avid cyclist. Biking was an integral part of the way in which she approached her cancer. As her disease became increasingly serious, she decided to do some of the things that she had always wanted to do. Among the list of things was going on some multi-day bike tours.
The cancer Liddy had is called Ewing's sarcoma. It is a rare and dangerous cancer and is one of over fifty subtypes of sarcomas. Sarcomas are cancers that can arise in the connective tissue of the body such as the fat, blood vessels, nerves, and in the bones. Liddy's cancer arose in one of the nerves in her leg. Here are a few sarcoma statistics: about 1% of all adult cancers are sarcomas; between 15-20% of all children’s cancers are sarcomas; about 60,000 patients and their families are struggling with sarcoma at any one time; about 10,000 new cases are diagnosed each year and about 5,000 people die each year from sarcomas. Since these cancers are rare in adults, many people are completely unaware of them. Furthermore, sarcoma-related research is under funded. One form of research is clinical trials. Unfortunately there is a lack of young adults in clinical trials. By participating in a Team Sarcoma Bike Tour you can help increase public awareness of sarcoma and the lack of young adults in cancer-based clinical trials and help raise money for sarcoma research.
You can help us in one of three ways:
Previous Bike Tours Our previous bike tours, which are summarized below, are described in detail on our companion Team Sarcoma website.
2006 Bike Tour: Team Sarcoma 2006 Bike Tour in Denmark During early July 2006, 50 members of Team Sarcoma 2006 took to the bike paths and back roads of Denmark. There were joined by over 770 people worldwide and raised over $120,000 for sarcoma research. Read about this amazing event by clicking here.
2005 Bike Tour: 2005 Cycle Zydeco Ride Over 80 of the cyclists in the 2005 Cycle Zydeco dedicated their ride as a memorial to Liddy by wearing Team Sarcoma armbands and by helping to spread the awareness of sarcoma. We also had over 260 Virtual Team Sarcoma cyclists from all over the world bike along with them. Additionally, we raised over $16,000 for sarcoma research as a result of these efforts.
2004 Bike Tour: 2004 Cycle Zydeco Ride Over 30 of the cyclists in the 2004 Cycle Zydeco dedicated their ride as a memorial to Liddy by wearing Team Sarcoma armbands and by helping to spread the awareness of sarcoma. We also had over 250 Virtual Bike Tour cyclists from all over the world bike along with them. Additionally, we raised $8,000 for sarcoma research as a result of these efforts.
2003 Bike Tours: 2003 Shriver Family Bike Tour for Sarcoma Research During early July, 28 members of Team Sarcoma took to the bikes paths and back roads of Denmark. They were joined by 260 Virtual Bike Tour riders from around the world and raised $75,000 which was used to fun three Sarcoma Foundation of America research grants.
2003 Cycle Zydeco Ride This was the very first initiative Team Sarcoma undertook. In was in April. Seven of us took to the back roads of south central Louisiana. We raised over $14,000 for sarcoma research at Columbia University.
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