When Vancouver sports radio host Scott Rintoul learned his wife, Fiona, had cancer, the self-proclaimed competitive couple decided to tackle the disease as if it were an opponent on the playing field.
They won the battle and now, just more than a year after Fiona finished chemotherapy, they will be cycling to Seattle from Vancouver to raise money for the B.C. Cancer Agency as part of the Ride To Conquer Cancer.
Last year, they joined 17,000 cyclists who raised $7 million for the cause.
“My wife … would have only been three and a half months out of chemo (during that ride),” said Scott, who hosts a show on Team 1040. “We finished together each day.”
The couple had only been married a few months when Fiona — whose mother died of cancer — was diagnosed. Scott said after the initial shock subsided, they found it made them stronger.
He added that every one of us will be touched by cancer at some point and it’s personal stories of other cancer patients — those he met in hospital and those of ride participants — that moved him to fundraise.
“When you’re going through chemo you see the other people in the hospital and they’re fighting just as hard and it may not be going as well (for them), and that’s the hard part,” Scott said.
“That’s who you want to ride for.”
