Overcoming Challenges in Bike Racing & Diabetes

Living with diabetes is tough. We understand your challenges. Because they are also our challenges.

Team Novo Nordisk riders race to inspire people affected by diabetes to never give up.

Mehdi Benhamouda:

I was happy to get the Best Young Rider jersey at the Tour of Azerbaijan, the first podium of the year for the team. And for me also, after a long break for my knee, I was really happy to have the podium.

It’s given me a lot of motivation for the next part of the season. The payoff to come back, yeah it was hard, and I get like a couple top 10s. Four…yeah, four. It made me happy a lot.

Chris Williams:

Racing in Denmark is always really good for us. We’ve got so many supporters there. It was a relatively short stage, just over 100km. I took the opportunity to get out there.

Two laps to go, I saw everyone screaming at me from side line, and I thought, oh, maybe we’re going to make it. And of course we got caught with 15m to go.

The Most Aggressive award was kind of a consolation, but to stand up there and display the Changing Diabetes® jersey on the podium, to get to get the word out there about Team Novo Nordisk and what we can do.

Going off the front is my best chance to have a result, and if I don’t try I have zero chances. So if I do try at least I’ve got a chance of doing something. And that’s the way I see it.

Charles Planet:

I had a bad crash at Tour of Britain in 2014. We were a few hundred meters up the sea. I was full of blood and my bike…I was just lucky that I had nothing broken. I kept going the next four stages maybe.

But every day I was in last position all day. And on the second to last stage, I just felt my body doesn’t want to respond and I couldn’t start the race.

My director told me, no worries, you just rest and go home and recover. After that crash a few weeks later, I was in Japan.

Stephen Clancy:

When I saw Tour of Utah on the 2016 race calendar I was pretty scared, if I’m honest.

I thought about quitting many times. The moto commissaire came alongside my group, and said, you have five minutes to make it to the finish line, which is 5km.

We were super worried we weren’t going to make it. I set my new max speed record on the downhill, 110km an hour, and when I crossed the finish line I was told, yeah, you’ve been nominated for the day’s Fan Favorite.

It was a really cool experience, going to the podium, getting the flowers, be amongst the top athletes in that race on the day.

Pretty cool. Once in a lifetime.