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Southpaw Productions joins MAD Danube Odyssey bike tour to raise money for SMA Trust

Agency employees from Southpaw Productions have joined a group of mad („crazy“ in the American dialect) individuals from all over Europe, who are cycling 1500Km from the source of the Danube River to Budapest in 11 days to raise money for children with Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA). They have travelled variously from Scotland, England, Italy, Germany and the Czech Republic in order to take part in the SMA Trust’s worldwide MAD Challenge. On Sunday, 4 September, Brady Clough of Southpaw Productions joined this group in Linz, Austria to ride with them to their final destination in Hungary. He will ride just over 600Km to support this deserving cause.

Many of the participants don’t know each other and they range from fit cycle enthusiasts to people who haven’t ridden a bike for years! The brains behind this is Rhys Williamson, a 22 year old student, who has always wanted to cycle from the source of the Danube to the Black Sea. 

So what has brought these people together to do this MAD Challenge? They have all been inspired by a group of children with SMA who have completed some extraordinary physical feats even though they have a genetic condition called Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA).This is a debilitating muscle wasting disease, which means that these children spend their lives in a wheelchair.  Freddie Sheffield, for example, who is 15 years old, has just travelled Coast to Coast (over 160 Km) in his wheelchair, with his family, in order to raise awareness of his condition and to raise invaluable funds for the very exciting research into finding a cure. Ben Knight, the same age, was pushed, heaved and lifted in his wheelchair up to one of the highest mountains in Wales.

„Despite not having the time to train as I would have wanted, I joined this project for personal reasons.  I have a friend and former boss, whose son suffers from this disease.  And I strongly believe that friends stand by and support friends.  My former boss gave me my first job in Prague in 1995, when I was in desperate need of employment.  Accepting the chance to help him and his family by cycling to raise money to cure his son was a no-brainer,“ comments Brady Clough on his reasons for accepting the MAD Challenge.  

These children inspired the MAD Challenge, managed by the SMA Trust (a charity whose sole purpose is to fund research into SMA). The idea is to get people involved in raising money for vital research which could stop children in the future having to cope with the daily burden of living with SMA. These children are saying ‘If we can do it – why can’t you?’ and are inviting people to do something extraordinary and mad, just as they have done. So far this initiative has been a huge success and has resulted in €400,000 being raised. “I know there is presently no cure or treatment for SMA. Many babies with a certain type of this disease will not live to see their second birthday. Research is the only hope for these families,” comments Keira Knightley, who is Patron of the SMA Trust.

Hopefully these intrepid cyclists will complete this tough physical challenge. If all goes well they may even be back to complete the second half of the challenge – cycling down to the Black Sea - next year.

We invite you to follow developments on our bike tour on Facebook at:  http://www.facebook.com/danubeodyssey