Sigma Run honours Elva with ‘Hero Duck’ team
The Sagicor Sigma Corporate Run will be honouring its start line MC for several years, elva Ruddock, with a new Sigma Run team dubbed hero Duck, adopted in true comedic fashion from a misspelling of the late comedienne’s name.
“Elva went to a store, and when she told the cashier her name was E Ruddock. She got back an invoice saying ‘Hero Duck’. The Sagicor Sigma Run is pleased to present team Hero Duck, which is a special team,” announced assistant vice-president of the Sagicor Group Marketing team, Alysia White at Jamaica Observer Monday exchange a week ago.
Registration cost for team Hero Duck, which has been limited to 250 spaces, is $2,500 per person. The team, White said, will have a special cake in honour of “our very own superhero Elva”.
Regular entry is $1,500 per person.
White said that Ruddock’s passing last October from lupus was as an ironic shock for the Sigma Run team, as the autoimmune disease was among the three health causes to benefit from this year’s staging.
“One of our dear friends, the start line MC for many years at Sigma Run, was Elva Ruddock. She passed away in [October] as a result of lupus. And irony is something else, because then we were deciding on the beneficiaries we were throwing around lupus and diabetes, and then when she passed away we were devastated. I think it was about two weeks after that we selected lupus as a beneficiary of Sigma Run,” said White.
“She was a champion. I call her a lupus warrior. I didn’t even know Elva was sick a year ago, and that’s the strength of people we are running for. And now we have the opportunity to honour her in such a big way and we are very excited about that,” she added.
Ruddock’s friend and colleague Christopher “Johnny” Daley will take her place as start line MC in this year’s race, scheduled for February 17.
The fund-raising target for the 21st staging of Sagicor Sigma Corporate Run is $52 million, with the selected beneficiaries being Diabetes Association of Jamaica, Lupus Foundation of Jamaica and the neonatal unit of the May Pen Hospital.