Team Sarcoma Initiative

The Team Sarcoma Initiative is an internationally coordinated set of events to raise awareness of sarcoma and raise funds to support sarcoma research, clinical trials, and patient and family services. Each year, one of the Team Sarcoma events, which we call the "core" Team Event, is a bike tour. We use bike tours to help achieve some of our goals because biking was an integral part of the way in which Liddy approached her cancer. As her disease became increasingly serious, she decided to do some of the things that she had always wanted to do. Among the list of things was going on some multi-day bike tours.

The cancer Liddy had is called Ewing's sarcoma. It is a rare and dangerous cancer and is one of over fifty subtypes of sarcomas. Sarcomas are cancers that can arise in the connective tissue of the body such as the fat, blood vessels, nerves, and in the bones. Liddy's cancer arose in one of the nerves in her leg. Here are a few sarcoma statistics: about 1% of all adult cancers are sarcomas; between 15-20% of all children’s cancers are sarcomas; about 60,000 patients and their families are struggling with sarcoma at any one time; about 10,000 new cases are diagnosed each year and about 5,000 people die each year from sarcomas. Since these cancers are rare in adults, many people are completely unaware of them. Furthermore, sarcoma-related research is under funded. One form of research is clinical trials. Unfortunately there is a lack of young adults in clinical trials. By participating in a Team Sarcoma event you can help increase public awareness of sarcoma and help raise money to support sarcoma research.

You can learn about the current and previous Team Sarcoma Initiatives at the Team Sarcoma Initiative website.