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Training for an odyssey

Broadcast Date: June 28, 1981

Terry Fox, an athletic teen living in Port Coquitlam, B.C., is just 18 when he develops a sharp pain in his right knee. Thinking it's a cartilage problem, Terry is shocked when doctors discover a malignant tumor and amputate his leg four days later.
Vowing to help beat the disease that claimed his leg, Terry begins his rehabilitation and training for a cross-country odyssey, running relentlessly through illness, injury and bad weather.

Training for an odyssey

• In the 1970s only 1 in 5 people with osteogenic sarcoma tumors were cured, usually by amputation. Thanks to advances in chemotherapy and new surgical techniques, most now survive.
• After losing his leg, Terry played wheelchair basketball with Rick Hansen. From 1985 to 1987 Hansen wheeled around the world on his "Man in Motion" tour for spinal cord research.

• Terry began his rehabilitation by weightlifting and jogging on the cinder track at Simon Fraser University.
• Terry trained for 15 months, and was so serious about it that at one stretch he ran for 101 days in a row. He took off Christmas day because his mother asked him to.
• Terry ran over 4,000 kilometres during his training — three-quarters of the distance he would run in the Marathon of Hope.

Training for an odyssey

Medium: Television

Program: CBC Television News Special

Broadcast Date: June 28, 1981

Guest(s): Terry Fox

Host: Peter Mansbridge
Reporter: Bill Good Jr.

Duration: 2:15

Last updated:
Aug. 14, 2003