Diabetes no barrier to this team
Results aren’t of secondary importance to too many professional sports organisations.
Team Novo Nordisk are different, though. The name they first rode under - Team Type 1 - gives a better indication of why.
Across four tiers of male riders, a women’s squad, triathletes and runners, each one of the 100 Team Novo Nordisk athletes is a Type 1 diabetic. The team’s top riders enjoy Pro Continental status - which puts them on the second rung of world cycling - and they’re about to send a development squad to January’s New Zealand Cycle Classic.
Three Kiwis will be among the squad: Caleb Aoake, Hamish Beadle and Scott Ambrose.
Formerly of Wellington, Ambrose will turn 22 during the five-day race around Wairarapa.
A promising age-group rider, whose career highlight was winning the Junior Tour of Canberra, Ambrose began to struggle in training shortly after. A few tests later he was diagnosed as Type 1 diabetic and assumed that was the end cycling career, aged just 18.
But Ambrose’s coach alerted him to the existence of Team Novo Nordisk and he was eventually signed to their development squad. He’s since moved on to a professional contract and won a stage and wore the green jersey for two days at last year’s Tour de Filipinas.
‘‘I hope that I am now able to inspire the younger generation who are living, and yet to be diagnosed, with Type 1 diabetes the way Novo Nordisk inspired me,’’ Ambrose said.
The United States-based Team Novo Nordisk are the first team confirmed for next year’s classic, which will be staged from January 22-26. Teams have until December 10 to register.
Team Novo Nordisk was launched in 2006 to raise diabetes awareness and progressed to the professional ranks by 2008. Russian rider Alexander Efimkin’s overall win at the 2011 Tour of Turkey would probably be the best result by a Novo Nordisk rider.
In terms of next year’s New Zealand Cycle Classic, 100 riders are expected to take part in what’s the 30th edition of the race.