Five years of Riders4Riders
The Riders4Riders association has turned five.
Five wonderful and challenging years in which the initial dream was helping seriously injured riders and support the research for a cure for spinal cord injuries.
It has become an increasingly important reality. The road we ‘ve been travelling on was so ambitious we couldn’t believe it. Our goals have become more and more ambitious.
We’ve collaborated with other associations to reach them. We shared the desire to work together to ensure our less fortunate friends to hope for a better tomorrow.
When Ride For Life 2014 ended, we felt the need to take some time to stop and think. It was a very important moment, suspended between what we had already done and the potential of the future.
We discussed and we realized that to regain the enthusiasm and energy of the beinning we had to return to our roots. Luca Pellegrini’s accident in 2009 shook our conscience.
First we tried to help him, after we realized that Luca had become the symbol of all the drivers injured doing what they love. From that accident, Riders4Riders was born. Thanks to our strong friendship, Luca chose to be our ambassador, he is the only one to enbody the spirit of our association.
Our commitment is to stand alongside the unluckiest riders, who have sacrificed a part of themselves: this is our DNA. This dangerous sport is for people used to sacrificing their; that’s what makes them stronger. However, we can’t forget the pain of a spinal cord injury and we can’t forget the need for a treatment (not being able to walk is just one of the problems).
Riders4Riders wants to help the research to give to future generations the possibility to walk again even after the worst falls.
From this renewed awareness, the 2015 edition of Ride For Life is born. It will be held on November 14-15 at the International “Enzo e Dino Ferrari” racetrack in Imola. A new and prestigious location to allow our cause to be known and shared by as many people as possible, all over Italy. We are not tied to a particular place: it is not the path that defines this event, but the importance of the battle we are fighting!
Finally, in this crucial moment of our journey, we want to thank everyone, those who have been with us so far, those who have stayed with us and those who chose, for various reasons, other roads. Organizations without their supporters are nothing; it’s the individuals, their thoughts, feelings, efforts and emotions that make the great achievements possible.
Thanks to the founders, volunteers, athletes who have intervened in the various editions of Ride For Life and the champions who wanted to link their image to our cause and who are our ambassadors to the world. Thanks to the thousands of supporters who help us every year with their donations. And finally, thanks to the guys that we have helped so far: if we hadn’t known you, our lives would have been immensely empty.
Our conclusions
We look back at the path we have done so far and we review the boys that Riders4Riders has helped in these five years: we do this to draw from them the energy to move forward in our wonderful project.
The look on their faces gives us strength. We feel on the right track. We have chosen, since the beginning, to support young riders who have suffered a spinal injury in training and during races.
We have chosen them not because they are the best or the most unfortunate, but simply because their story belongs to us: we help injured riders because we could not do otherwise, we help them like a wolf does to help one of his pack.
What pushes us is empathy, sharing our passion, something that transcends rationality, but when we need to raise funds and donate them we are very rational and pragmatic.
Since Luca Pellegrini fell in training in 2009, and hit so hard not to get up again, we understood the real drama that a spinal cord injured person can experience. We understood that the family of the rider needs every help they can get when life changes like that.
The economic aid above all, because the expenses a family has to face are endless. They need help from the rehabilitation to general aids, to the adjustment of home life. And why not, the economic aid to buy what may be used to psychologically unburden this situation, maybe a Quad or Kart to reenter competition (when you’re lucky enough to move your hands) and perhaps to feel alive (remember that we are talking about sportsmen). Sometimes it also means helping them to support their study expenses.
Following Luca’s evolution from the boy who had the accident to the wonderful man he has become now, seeing his ability to help people who are in the same conditions, seeing his calm with which he faces life, it has given us the strength and the tools to continue this battle.
We help the people, not their disabilities: each of them has faced paralysis with thoughts, character and different tools. Each one has different needs, the primary ones which are dictated by the new condition.
We accept their priorities and we try to follow them even when the emotion of the first months fades and people move away. It is time to sum up, we want you to know the people you have donated to.
They’re not numbers, they’ve got names and faces. You who have donated to Riders4riders, who have bought our raffle tickets, who have come to our events, who have lined up to run for those who can no longer do that, you deserve to see the people and not just balance bill.
Obviously standing next to these guys made us understand the shadowy sides, the fear of depression always lurking, the difficulty of reaching the acceptance of an existence redefined by new limits.
Knowing them warned us of the rhetoric of the disabled super man, the fact that they are brave, motivated and incredibly independent should not make us forget that not being able to walk is just the tip of the iceberg, the suffering linked to spinal cord injury is infinitely greater .
We are convinced that we can and must find a cure for paralysis and that supporting research is a moral duty towards those who are suffering from trauma to the spinal cord.
That is why in 2013, after a long and careful consideration, we have identified a research project that deserves to be funded, namely, the studies of professor Gregoire Courtine at EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique de Lausanne Fedédérale).
And here are the numbers, thanks for your support!
FUNDS DONATED TO PILOTS FROM 2010 TO 2014
63,500 euros
Drivers: Luca Biondi, Luca Gualandi, Paolo Barbato, Andrea Meschiari, Sebastjan Baur, Alessia Polita, Lorenzo Picasso
FUNDS DONATED TO RESEARCH
2010 WINGS FOR LIFE 10,000
2012 PROJECT COURTINE 30,000
2013 PROJECT COURTINE 30,000
2014 PROJECT COURTINE 30,000
PROJECT COURTINE
Gregoire Courtine is the director of Neuroprosthetic Centre of the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. We would like you to learn more about him and his studies.
The young Courtine was deeply impressed by the personality and ideas of Christopher Reeve, the actor who, after his paralysis, committed the last years of his life as an activist for the cause of people with spinal paralysis.
Inspired by Reeve and people like him, Courtine started to think “beyond the lab” and to go in rehabilitation centers, where people are fighting hard to reach every small achievement. He began to wonder what he could do in the lab to improve the lives of these people.
Using a healthy pragmatism, Courtine works to develop a new approach to treating spinal injuries, affecting approximately 50,000 people each year.
Instead of the classic approach, trying to regenerate nerve fibers, he is trying something different, trying to “awaken the neuronal networks that coordinate locomotion.”
Here is a simple metaphor, for those who are not neuroscientists, to his theory: “Imagine the locomotor system as a car. The engine is the spinal cord. The transmission is interrupted, the engine is off. How you can restart the engine? “. That’s where the idea of ”electrochemical neuroprosthesis” comes from.
After a spinal cord injury, the cells around the lesion are still functional, but they simply do not receive signals. How can you reactivate them? During conferences, Courtine always shows a movie of a mouse. At first it is completely paralyzed, then it walks, then it runs on a treadmill. Courtine says the movie shows that locomotion is completely involuntary, the animal does not have control of the legs, “the steering system” is compromised.
Courtine’s team accepts the challenge of developing a new system that can guide the movements of an animal.
“It’s really amazing,” the professor explains showing a small neuroprosthesis, designed to support a mouse that weighs 200 grams, enabling it to move in all directions, but without forcing the movement. The mouse has to decide whether to walk or not.
His first results were disappointing. The same rat who moved so well on the treadmill only five minutes before, now he was unable to take a single step. But, one of the essential characteristics of a scientist is perseverance. After seven months of testing, developing and testing new ideas, the paralyzed rat can stand up and, when he wants, can walk or run, even managing to make the steps.
The video of this mouse is the first example of voluntary movements of the legs after a spinal cord injury that caused paralysis. We all think it’s a great thing, of course, we wonder if this will help paralyzed people.
The scientist asks himself the same question every day and, using caution, he replies “The truth is that we do not know enough yet, this is certainly not a cure for cord injury, but it could lead to a decisive intervention to improve the quality of people’s lives “.
Courtine and his team’s dream is to continue research to develop a customed program for anyone who has been affected by spinal cord injuries, to get to a “personalized neuroprosthesis.”
This is not to replace lost functions, but rather to help the brain help itself. Courtine argues that we should not ask IF this revolution will happen, but WHEN it will happen. Courtine always ends his speeches by saying “We are as big as our imagination, strong as our dreams”, and we know that every scientific breakthrough was first of all a dream.