Our Mission

In January 1997, Nello and I launched Ride for Life with this mission statement, little knowing at the time how prescient and indeed how valid these words were to prove and remain to be:

"There are few of us whom cancer has not or will not touch, either directly or through the affliction to or loss of family, friends, loved ones. It is impossible not to feel helpless as individuals in the face of this horrible disease that has become almost a modern day plague. Fortunately organisations exist that are making real progress in finding cures. Nello and Marc's Ride for Life is our small way of doing something to help.
Cycling is our passion, and it is more than this: a way of connecting physically with faraway places, of demonstrating that distances between cultures and continents are not so vast after all, a way of staying in touch with family and friends whom we miss and whom we have lost.
Please help us to help cancer research organisations such as FORCE continue their excellent work."

Speaking at Nello's memorial service in October 1999 I recalled our friendship and made this pledge:

"And of course, there was Ride for Life, our crazy, wonderful cycle to Venice. The sharing of such a physically intensive activity creates deep bonds of friendship, but It was really much more than just a bike ride. For Ride for Life involved and touched so many of us in so many ways through the solidarity that comes from working together for an important cause [the fight against cancer].

Many people have expressed to me a feeling of cruel irony that after all our efforts and activities, Nello himself should have contracted this wretched disease. But everyone should know that Nello himself never thought this. For in doing Ride for Life, we never thought that we would be granted some special dispensation that would somehow make us immune, nor indeed that we deserved to be.

Quite the contrary. We knew that this is a disease that has the capacity to afflict any one of us, young or old, strong or less strong, and at any moment. We became involved, I think, simply because we were strong, because we were able to be involved, and because, through our physical exertions, we were able to capture the imagination of all who supported us, and thus contribute in our own way to this desperate fight. That fight must continue, and so I have no doubt that Ride for Life will take to the saddle again in some form just as Nello would have wanted."

And so it has...

Please send any comments about this web site or Ride for Life to:
marc@quaypress.com