Olympians and dragon boaters take strokes for breast cancer

PORTLAND, Ore, Sept. 8, 2006 – Over 400 rowers, canoe paddlers and dragon boaters, including Portland Olympians Lisa Schlenker and Stacey Borgman, are expected to ply the waters of the Willamette on Sunday, Sept. 17 for Portland’s 13th annual Row for the Cure® regatta.

Row for the Cure®, the Portland rowing and paddling community’s annual fundraiser for the Oregon and SW Washington Affiliate of the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, takes place simultaneously with the Komen Portland Race for the Cure®. Runners and walkers can watch the Row along the seawall in Tom McCall Waterfront Park from 8:30 a.m. to 11 a.m.

Rowers and paddlers from Portland, Lake Oswego, Tigard, Klamath Falls along with Vancouver and Redmond, Washington are participating in the event.

“We’re encouraging all rowers and paddlers to each raise at least $150 – the estimated cost of a mammogram,” said Kathy Frederick of Portland’s Station L Rowing Club who started Row for the Cure® to support runners and walkers in the Race for the Cure®. “Annual screening mammography for women over 40 and monthly self-exams from women and men are very important to early detection.”

Dr. John Rudoff, 58, a competitor in nearly every Row for the Cure® since 1994, witnessed first-hand the benefits of early detection when his father Hyman was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1992.

“His tumor was less than a centimeter. It was a very fortuitous finding,” said Rudoff, a Portland cardiologist who pulls an oar five days a week at the Willamette Rowing Club. “I was very surprised, but you can do a lot of research in a couple of hours,” he said. “By the next morning I knew the statistics and the approach. (My father) promptly had a mastectomy and quickly went back to sailing his boat.” Breast cancer among men is relatively rare with some 1,400 American men diagnosed each year.

Olympians Schlenker and Borgman, double sculls winners at last year’s Row, will again support the fight against breast cancer. The duo represented the U.S. at the 2004 Athens Olympics. At 42-years-old, Schlenker finished sixth in the lightweight women’s single sculls at this summer’s world rowing championships.

The dragon boating community will also be well-represented with four teams comprised of 88 paddlers. Among the paddlers are WASABI SOAR, a team of breast cancer survivors from the Portland area.

For the second consecutive year, the City of Portland’s fireboat will shoot a stream of environmentally safe pink water high into the air near the finish lines of both the Race and Row for the Cure. The water display will take place approximately 10 a.m. In another on-water tribute, in the week leading up to the Race and the Row, the Portland Spirit will fly pink nautical burgees to honor those who have been touched by breast cancer.

Racing begins at the old fireboat dock on the Eastbank Esplanade. Participants will row and paddle down river for just over a mile then return upriver to the finish line at the Portland Spirit dock near the Race for the Cure® finish line.

Row for the Cure® in the Rose City, one of 30 third-party events that take place each year raising nearly $700,000 for the Oregon and SW Washington Affiliate of the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation www.komenoregon.org has raised over $116,000 since Portland rower Kathy Frederick started the first regatta in 1994. The Row has since grown to ten U.S. cities and Frankfurt, Germany raising an estimated $430,000 in the fight to eradicate breast cancer as a life threatening disease.

Rowers, and canoe/kayak paddlers can register for the regatta by visiting www.RowForTheCure.com. Canoe/Kayak rentals are available at a discount from Alder Creek Kayak and Canoe (www.aldercreek.com) located at the Portland Boat House, 49 SE Clay (corner of SE Water and SE Clay) near the Eastbank Esplanade.

About Row for the Cure®
Row for the Cure® (www.RowForTheCure.com)regattas are third-party events benefiting local affiliates of the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. Since the regatta’s inception in 1994 on Portland’s Willamette River, Row for the Cure® has expanded to ten U.S.cities, raising over $430,000 in the fight to eradicate breast cancer as a life threatening disease.