Annual ride departs from Guelph
Greg Layson
Last year, thanks to a double-lung transplant, he raced his bike 20 kilometres at the World Transplant Games in Australia.
Mazzucco was staring death in the face when his mother woke him with the news an organ had been donated.
“Wake up! We’re going to Toronto! They’ve got lungs for you!” she said.
“I didn’t know what to think,” Mazzucco said. “It was like I was in a dream.”
It was a dream that had come true after 15 long months battling cystic fibrosis.
“It’s the most selfless thing a person can do,” Mazzucco said of organ donation. “They don’t get anything in return.”
One person can save up to eight lives by simply signing their organ donor card.
That’s the message Greg Davis set out to spread Tuesday from here to Quebec City during the 2010 Victor Davis Memorial Ride, an effort to raise the awareness of organ donation.
Davis is the brother of Olympic swimmer and Guelph native Victor Davis, who died after being struck by a car outside a nightclub in suburban Montreal in 1989.
The Davis family donated Victor’s organs to those in need. His heart, liver, kidneys and two corneas were transplanted.
“The organ recipients are nothing but grateful,” Greg Davis said. “It’s hard to put that kind of gratitude into words. I mean, someone you never met gave you your life.”
He will ride more than 1,000 km from the Victor Davis Pool, at the Victoria Road Recreation Centre, to the Canadian Transplant Games in Quebec City.
“There is no better tribute and thanks the recipients can give than to do their best at the games,” Davis said.
He will stop at several hospitals along his way to increase awareness for organ and tissue donation.
“It’s ridiculously easy to do. It takes 30 seconds,” Davis said of signing an organ donor card.
People can consent to donating their organs at either www.giftoflife.on.ca/ or www.recycleme.org.
“Really consider it because I don’t see anything negative about signing one,” Mazzucco said.
“Few of us can match the heroics of Victor Davis in the pool. But few cannot afford to match his generous gift of life,” said the city’s manager of facilities and programs, Rob Mackay, before wishing Davis the best.
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