Terry Fox Run 2007 will be held in Malaysia on 4th November 2007 at Lake Gardens, Kuala Lumpur. The Terry Fox Run has been held in Malaysia for over 15 years. The Runs since 2001 have raised more than RM750,000/-, with 2006`s contribution being RM281,000.
The Terry Fox Run is a non-competitive event for the whole family, with a large number of participants under the age of 10 and over the age of 50. Two routes are being planned, one for fun-runners and another for experienced runners. Cyclists and roller-bladers are welcome.
To take part in the run, just append your details in the comment section with your name, organization, t-shirt size and no of participant!
IMPORTANT: The pre-registration process is very important so that the Organizer can estimate the number of T-shirts to be printed. So, you can greatly help the organizer with their estimation by pre-registering here!
T-shirt collection points manned by volunteers!
Bangsar Shopping Centre (20-21 October 2007)
Ground Floor
Hours: 10am – 8pm
Menara Citibank (29 October 2, November, 2007)
Lobby
Hours : 12-2pm daily
1-Utama (27-28 October)
Hours : 10am-10pm
For those who are interested to sign up, do visit http://www.terryfoxrunkl.org for more info..
Terrance Stanley “Terry” Fox, CC (July 28, 1958 June 28, 1981) was a Canadian humanitarian, athlete, and cancer treatment activist. He became famous for the Marathon of Hope, a cross-Canada run to raise money for cancer research, which Fox ran with one prosthetic leg. He is considered one of Canada’s greatest heroes of the 20th century and is celebrated internationally every September as people participate in the Terry Fox Run, the world’s largest one-day fundraiser for cancer research.
Biography
Terry Fox was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada to Rolly and Betty Fox. He was raised in the family home on Morrill Street in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, with his brother Fred, his younger brother Darrel, and his sister Judith.
Sports
As a child, Fox was always an active sports fan, with diving being his favourite sport. Four things were evident about him; first, he loved sports of all kinds – soccer, rugby, baseball, and basketball. Second, he was not tall, so he had to work harder than the bigger kids. Third, he was extremely competitive. Lastly, he had a huge amount of determination.
In junior high school, Fox loved basketball and wanted to play guard on the Mary Hill Cobras team. He was only 5 feet tall at the time and mediocre at the game. In order to achieve his goal, he spent every day practising his basketball skills. By Grade Ten, he was one of the best guards. In senior high school he was a starting guard for the Port Coquitlam Ravens. Thus, he achieved his goal because of his determination.
In his teenage years, he won numerous medals in diving and swimming competitions, and impressed many people with his stamina and endurance. Though many of his instructors encouraged him to stay with water sports and train professionally, Fox instead pursued the dream of becoming a physical education teacher. After graduating with honours from Port Coquitlam Senior Secondary School (which was later renamed Terry Fox Secondary School in his honor), he studied kinesiology at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia. Fox was an active student at SFU and participated in a variety of on-campus clubs and groups.
Crash
On November 12, 1976, Fox was driving back home along Port Coquitlam’s highway in his green 1968 Ford Cortina. He was distracted by a bridge construction site, and his car slammed into a half-ton truck. Nothing happened to the driver or the truck, and Fox came out of the accident with only a sore right knee.
Osteosarcoma
In 1977, after feeling pain in his right knee, he was diagnosed with osteosarcoma. This is a form of cancer that strikes men more than women, usually around ages ten to twenty-five. Very often the cancer starts at the knee, then works its way up into the muscles and tendons. At the time, the only way to treat his condition was to amputate his right leg several inches above the knee.
Fox believed that the injury from the 1976 crash had weakened his knee and made it more susceptible to cancer, although his doctors disagreed.The causes of osteosarcoma are not known.
Three years after losing his leg at age 18, the young athlete decided to run from coast to coast in order to raise money for cancer research. In creating the Marathon of Hope, his goal was to raise $1 from each Canadian citizen.
Marathon of Hope
Fox began by dipping his leg in the Atlantic Ocean at St. John’s, Newfoundland on April 12, 1980. He intended to dip it in the Pacific Ocean when he arrived in Victoria, British Columbia. He also filled two large bottles with Atlantic Ocean water; his plan was to keep one as a souvenir and pour the other one into the Pacific. His plan was to run about 42 km (26.2 miles) a day, the distance of a typical marathon. No one had ever done anything similar to the task Fox was undertaking.
Fox was unable to finish his run. X-rays revealed that Terry’s right lung had a lump the size of a golf ball, and his left lung had another lump the size of a lemon. The lumps were not lung cancer; rather, they were bone cancer that went into his lungs through his bloodstream. He was forced to stop the run on September 1, 1980 just north-east of Thunder Bay, Ontario, after 143 days. He had run 5,373 km (3,339 miles, or around 23.3 miles per day) through Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, Quebec, and Ontario.
Soon after Fox was forced to stop, the CTV television network organized a telethon in hopes of raising additional funds for the cause. Any celebrities within range of Toronto were invited to participate, and the event raised millions of dollars. Many of the guests paid tribute to Fox; TV actor Lee Majors called him “the real Six Million Dollar Man.”
Death
In June of 1981, Terry developed pneumonia, and on June 27 he went into a coma. He died on the 28th at 4:35 am which was his favourite hour of running, a year after his legendary run, exactly one month shy of his twenty-third birthday.
Terry’s funeral was large and was broadcast live on national television. He is buried in the Port Coquitlam cemetery, near his favourite lookout just outside the cemetery gates.
The run
The Terry Fox Run is run around the world every year to raise money for cancer research. It is non-competitive- no winners or awards, just people joining to raise money for cancer research. Steve Fonyo, a cancer survivor inspired by Fox, completed the full length of Fox’s course. Fonyo’s left leg had been amputated.
In a public opinion poll, Terry Fox was voted the most famous Canadian of the 20th century. He was voted number two on The Greatest Canadian list.
Biographies
His story is dramatized in the 1983 HBO TV movie The Terry Fox Story, which the Fox family has criticized for negatively depicting Terry Fox as having a fiery temper. In that film, he was portrayed by Eric Fryer, who won the Best Actor award at the 5th Genie Awards in 1984 for his portrayal.
In 2005, a new movie, titled Terry, was produced by the CTV television network. In that film, Fox was portrayed by Shawn Ashmore. Unlike Fryer, however, Ashmore is not himself an amputee; digital editing was used to superimpose a prosthesis over Ashmore’s real leg.
Author Douglas Coupland also chronicled Fox in his 2005 book Terry – The Life of Canadian Terry Fox.
Source: Wikepedia , TerryFoxRunKL.org
[tags]Malaysia, Terry Fox Run, 2007, charity, cancer, foundation, Lake Gardens, Kuala Lumpur[/tags]