
‘What British cycling Team?’ you may ask. Good question – and a particularly timely one given ITV’s From The Heart campaign, as all the riders have had lifesaving and life-supporting organ transplants. The games? The 19th edition of the World Transplant Games - an international event covering a range of sports held every two years to raise the profile of issues surrounding organ donation and transplantation.
This is us at the last World Games in Sweden in 2011.
On between the 11th and 13th February in the run up to Valentine’s Day, ITV’s From The Heart campaign is to encourage people to consider joining the organ donor register and, importantly, to tell their loved ones of their wishes. Get the tellybox on to ITV this evening from 8pm and see some superstars, some with transplants, demonstrating the success of organ donation. The GB Tx cycling team contains riders from 16 to over 70 who can throw a leg over a bike only because they have benefited from a kidney, heart, liver of bone marrow transplant. We race pretty hard so we know this stuff works.
If you want to read more about the success of transplantation and riding, racing and training with us, you could do worse that read ReCycled. It’s all about life, death, winning, losing and really important stuff like trying to find a Campagnolo stockist in Japan… J
Please have a think about joining the register. At present 96% think it’s a good idea and 30% of people are actually registered. You are far more likely to need a transplant than ever die in circumstances that allow donation and hopefully this campaign will go some way to filling that big gap. A link to the register is here.
Right, we need to get back to Vo2 max’s and Z5 efforts to try to stay ahead of the Italians…
Cheers. 'ReCycled' Rich
The GB Tx team are raising the money they need to get to South Africa to compete via Just Giving...