Wheelchair athletes join fundraiser to help towards finding a cure for paralysis
Wheelchair athletes have joined a fundraising challenge this month to raise vital funds towards finding a cure for paralysis.
Team GB wheelchair basketball players Anastasia Blease and Ben Leitch, rising star Alice McHaffie, and wheelchair racer Hilmy Shawwal are joining staff, customers, and supporters of RGK Wheelchairs in a Strava fitness challenge to fundraise for Spinal Research.
The athletes are ambassadors of the Staffordshire-based company that manufactures made-to-measure sport and daily wheelchairs. They will be logging their activity on Strava, a service for tracking physical exercise which incorporates social network features, during July to support RGK Wheelchairs’ fundraising push.
RGK Wheelchairs Sales and Marketing Director, Dorian Benjamin, said: “We create the lightest chairs on the market that are uniquely made to match the requirements and individuality of every user to strive and unlock their unstoppable ambition.
“We’re also all about encouraging health and fitness among our customers and staff and the July Strava Fitness Challenge brings all this together to help Spinal Research in their unstoppable ambition to improve the lives of people paralysed after a spinal cord injury.”
Spinal Research is a charity funding medical research to develop life-changing treatments for the millions around the world living with a spinal cord injury and to ultimately cure paralysis.
Spinal Research Chief Executive Louisa McGinn commented: “We’re delighted that some of our best wheelchair athletes are coming together in such a positive way to help raise vital funds to bring our vision of curing paralysis a step closer. We’re in touching distance of function restoring treatments and there is real hope that curing paralysis will be the medical breakthrough of the 21st century.”
Maxwell McKnight, a man with Spinal Muscular Atrophy, recently took on a massive challenge. He summited Mount Snowdon in an all-terrain powerchair.