Phil Knight the man who once sold running shoes from the boot of his car gave $2 billion to the Knight Cancer Institute at Oregon Health & Science University. It is the largest donation ever to a U.S. university, college, or health institution. That’s not just philanthropy it’s an audacious act of hope.
The Knights are no strangers to medical causes. A decade ago, they matched $500 million raised for the same institute, doubling its resources overnight. Now, working alongside Dr. Brian Druker a pioneer who revolutionised cancer treatment through targeted therapies they’ve taken that commitment to a level few could have imagined. Their aim is simple but staggering: to transform how we understand, treat, and ultimately cure cancer.
It’s a long way from where Knight began. In his memoir Shoe Dog, he recalls the early days in 1964, selling Japanese running shoes from the back of his Plymouth Valiant. That tiny venture became Nike, a company now worth billions, built on the belief that sport can change lives. Knight’s business story is a lesson in vision and persistence. His philanthropy suggests he believes science can be driven the same way.
I read about Knight’s gift on the same day I went for physiotherapy. As I worked through my exercises coaxing my stubborn leg into action my mind wandered to the same place it often goes when I hear news of medical breakthroughs.
What if there was a cure for paralysis?
What if the messages from my brain to my leg flowed freely again, the broken bridge in my nervous system rebuilt? I imagine standing up without a thought, my body suddenly fluent in movements it has long forgotten.
In my mind, I’d turn into a kind of Superman not the cape-wearing, planet-saving sort, but the kind who makes up for lost time with a vengeance. I’d run until my lungs burned, play sport until the sun set, walk miles just because I could. I’d board a plane without wondering about access, climb mountains, dive into oceans, and dance on cobbled streets somewhere far from home. I wouldn’t stop.
It’s a fantasy, but one rooted in the same force that fuels Knight’s gift: hope.
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Cancer and paralysis aren’t the same, but they share a brutal truth, both can strike without warning, both can strip away the life you once knew, and both create a hunger for breakthroughs that feels almost primal. I’ve lost friends to cancer. I know people living in the limbo of waiting for better treatments. And I know my own quiet ache for a cure, the way it sits with me every day, sometimes loud, sometimes barely a whisper.
That’s why stories like this matter. They’re not just about money; they’re about momentum. Science is often portrayed as a slow, careful march, but the right funding can turn it into a sprint. Knight’s donation will pay for labs, equipment, trials, and the kind of bold, risky research governments often won’t touch. It can draw in brilliant minds from around the world and give them the freedom to chase ideas that might otherwise remain trapped in grant applications.
Of course, $2 billion won’t cure cancer tomorrow. But it will close the gap between where we are and where we dream of being. And maybe just maybe the breakthroughs made possible in oncology will ripple outwards into other areas of medicine. Advances in gene editing, cell therapy, and neuroregeneration could one day be applied to paralysis.
I left physio tired but strangely energised. I thought about Knight, about Dr. Druker, about the patients whose lives might be extended or saved because one man decided to write the biggest cheque of his life. I thought about the people who will never meet him but will feel the impact of his gift. And I thought about my own “what if” not as an impossible dream, but as a possibility that’s just waiting for its turn.
In Shoe Dog, Knight wrote: “I wanted to build something that was my own, something I could point to and say: I made that. It was the only way I saw to make life meaningful.” It’s clear that for him, meaning now comes not just from shoes and sport, but from putting the weight of his fortune behind the hardest problems in medicine.
We need more of that from billionaires, from companies, from governments, and from ordinary people giving what they can. Medical revolutions don’t happen in isolation. They’re built from thousands of contributions, from lab bench to bedside. Knight’s gift is historic, but it’s also a reminder that progress is a team effort.
Until the day science answers my “what if,” I’ll keep doing my rehab. I’ll keep pushing through the ache, because every step I take now makes me ready for the steps I hope to take in the future. And I’ll keep believing stubbornly, unapologetically that cures for both cancer and paralysis are out there, waiting for us to find them.
Because if Phil Knight can take the biggest swing of his life for cancer research, the rest of us can keep showing up for our own battles. Hope, after all, is contagious and with that mindset I challenge you today to go and move your body in the beauty of nature for all those who can’t and to remind yourself “Be where your feet are”
