Griffin to hurl himself across Canada

Three months before Tony Griffin attempts to cycle across Canada - and, despite the enormous distance, failure is clearly not an option - the challenge has already inspired plenty of people.

The scale of ambition and motivation around his fund-raising event for cancer research was fully evident at yesterday's launch in Dublin, when among those to give Griffin their backing was Lance Armstrong (via a recorded video link), a man who knows everything about both long cycles and cancer suffering.

The bare facts alone illustrate the extraordinary magnitude of Griffin's challenge: A distance of 6,650km (or 4,132 miles), from Vancouver to Halifax. A schedule of just six weeks, which means he'll need to cover around 142km each day. It's the second-largest landmass on earth and includes a few notable obstacles, such as the Rocky Mountains and the Canadian Shield.

Griffin, who is a student at Dalhusie University in Canada, has given himself from May 15th to July 1st to complete the journey, and as if that weren't enough, he'll then fly straight to Dublin and complete a homecoming leg to his native Clare, which he has dubbed the "final sprint".

All this wouldn't be so bad if Griffin was, say, like Armstrong, a former seven-time winner of the Tour de France. But he's a born-and-bred hurler, one of Clare's best players since 2001 and an All Star forward last year. The farthest he's ever cycled is around 50km, and if he's never heard of saddle-soreness before then he's definitely about to.

"I really can't explain exactly where this thought came from," he says. "It just came to me one night, out of nowhere. But I know it grew out of the desire to do something that would honour my father's memory. I've now lost my father, an uncle and an aunt to cancer, and I felt I'd got to do something, that was not about me, but that could make a difference."

Griffin's father, Jerome, died in December 2005 after a nine-month battle with lung cancer, despite being a non-smoker all of his life. Since then Griffin has been captivated by the desire to do something to mark his passing, and has titled his challenge the "Cycle for the Cure" as he believes the funds he will raise can ultimately contribute to finding a cure for cancer.

"We may not cure cancer with this," he adds, "but we'll raise a lot of money to help the people that are out there researching and looking for that cure. That's why it's all going to the Lance Armstrong Foundation and the Irish Cancer Society and the integral work they carry out to find a cure for cancer."

Griffin has carefully plotted his route, and put a significant back-up team in place and several major sponsors, including Martin Donnelly, MC Sport and Setanta Sports.

Initially he was targeting around €150,000. "We're well on our way to reaching that already," he says, "so the question now is can we top the €1 million mark."

Full details can be found at www.tonygriffinfoundation.com.