New venue for Alberta Ride

By John Hopkins



CALGARY, AB -- The community of Olds, AB will play host to the 2005 Alberta Ride for Sight. Details of the move to the Agricultural Society Fairgrounds in Olds were made official at a special kick-off for the 2005 event at the Calgary Motorcycle Show on Saturday.



The Alberta Ride will run June 10-12, with parades to the host site scheduled to leave from Calgary, Edmonton and Red Deer on the morning of June 11. Olds has hosted the Ride in the past, but not since the late 1980's according to the event's assistant chair, Sue Dolan.



"We like to stick to the middle of the province [when chosing a host site] because we get riders from all over the province," Dolan said at the kick-off.



The Ride for Sight raises funds on behalf of The Foundation Fighting Blindness -- Canada to aid in research of retinal disease. Last year the various Rides across Canada raised $1.3 million. Of that, $86,000 came from the Alberta Ride.



The function at the Calgary show featured special guests Dr. William Stell from the University of Calgary's Faculty of Medicine and Dr. Torben Bech-Hansen, who works in the Department of Medical Genetics at the University of Calgary. Both discussed the developments being made in vision research thanks to the fundraising efforts of the Ride for Sight.