GREEK PEAK (WENY)-- On Sunday, October 10th dozens of downhill mountain bike racers attended Shred 2 Cure to not only have fun enjoying Greek Peaks last weekend of trail riding but more importantly to raise awareness and funding for Cystic Fibrosis research. 

Cystic Fibrosis is a rare genetic disease that at this time has no cure. A rare disease is a disease that has not been adopted by the pharmaceutical industry because it offers little financial incentive to make and market drugs to treat or prevent it. In the case of CF the number of cases throughout the U.S. would need to increase for it to receive research funding, as the disease currently stands, there are just over 30,000 cases in the U.S. and 70,000 worldwide.

“It's a progressive illness so it kind of gets harder to manage as time goes on,” said Hansen. “There's a lot of thick and sticky mucus that can build up in the lungs and over time that causes scarring, essentially respiratory failure and difficulty breathing.”  

While this event was put on for everyone struggling with this rare disease, the event organizer Bradley Dewitt, had his fiance Briana Hansen in mind during the entire process. 

“A lot of community members here have Cystic Fibrosis so we wanted to take the opportunity to do what we love and incorporate a well-rounded foundation event where we could raise a lot of money and have a lot of fun,” said Dewitt. 

With CNY Freeride donating $2,500 to the Syracuse chapter of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and the event being able to raise around $4,000, organizers were able to bring in just over $7,000. Events like Shred 2 Cure are very important when it comes to raising research funds and ultimately finding a cure; from 2008 to 2019 the National Institutes of Health raised $86,000,000 per year for CF research through private funding. 

“Right now we have a lot of amazing treatments but a lot of the treatments just treat the symptoms of the disease as opposed to curing the disease,” said Hansen. 

This was the first-ever Shred 2 Cure event but everyone that participated plans to make this a staple of Greek Peaks downhill mountain biking culture and Dewitt said downhill riders can expect it to come back bigger and better next year. 

“We are hoping that this is the first year of a lot of exciting years down here at Gree Peak Mountain Resorts,” said Dewitt. “ To get as many bikers down here as possible, maybe some pro riders come down next year, get the ball rolling, get a lot of funds raised and make sure CF stands for cure found.”

 Hansen, Dewitt, and McDowell wanted to thank everyone that attended and helped put the event on.