Dhruv Gaur, the Jeopardy! contestant whose message of support for host Alex Trebek went viral earlier this week, is continuing to rally support for the long-time game show host amid his ongoing battle with pancreatic cancer. Set to appear on Thursday’s episode of The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Gaur announced that he and other contestants will be taking part in a “play-along” during the Tournament of Champions on Thursday and Friday night to raise money for pancreatic cancer research.
With all the attention coming my way, I want to also re-up this play-along for Pancreatic Cancer on Thursday and Friday. Many of us are donating $1 for every question we get right when playing along at home to the Lustgarten Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer Research. Join along! https://t.co/0BzrvDo3RC
— Dhruv Gaur (@dhruvg_) November 12, 2019
“There’s been a lot of energy around this and kind of to keep that up, something that a lot of contestants and I on the tournament are gonna be doing tonight and tomorrow night is during the finals of the Tournament of Champions that will be airing, we’re going to be playing along at home,” Gaur said, according to PEOPLE. “And for every question we get right we’re going to donate a dollar to the Lustgarten Foundation to support pancreatic cancer research.”
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Gaur became a viral sensation after he gave up his Final Jeopardy answer to instead write down the message, “What is we [love] you Alex,” betting $1,995 of his $2,000 on the answer.
“Oh, that’s very kind of you,” Trebek, holding back tears, responded. “Thank you.”
Speaking about the moment that quickly went viral, with fans joining in to share their own messages of support for Trebek, Guar told DeGeneres that he wrote his answer down just after Trebek revealed that he would be re-entering treatment.
“It was right after Alex had actually announced publicly that he was going to re-enter chemotherapy for his pancreatic cancer, and he had come back to the green room and talked to all of the contestants who were on the tournament and we could really tell that like it was tough for him,” he said.
“So you know when I got up there, like, obviously I wasn’t going to win the game or anything,” he explained. “So I was like, I could try to figure out the right answer or, you know, I could do something for this person who might need it right now.”
The moment quickly began to trend on Twitter with the hashtag “[We Love You Alex],” something that Gaur had not been expecting.
“I was at the launch party for this episode with my friends and my mom texted me and she was like, ‘You’re trending on Twitter,’ and I was like ‘Ok mom, eight tweets isn’t trending,’ ” he said. “Then she was like ‘No, really, check’ and ‘We love you Alex’ was like in the top 10 trending hashtags on Twitter.”
Trebek initially announce his stage 4 cancer diagnosis in March, revealing in August that he had finished treatment. In September, he revealed that he would have to undergo chemotherapy a second time.
