Last month's news that Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk had re-upped its sponsorship of the namesake all-diabetic Pro Continental team ended months of anxiety for team founder and manager Phil Southerland, who has been running the program since its inception in 2008.
Novo Nordisk took over sponsorship of Southerland's 'Type 1' pro teams in 2013 on the condition that all the athletes on the team would be diabetic. The sponsor renewed for two more seasons in 2015, taking them through the end of this season, but until recently the team's future was up in the air.
"There've been a lot of changes at Novo Nordisk, and we went through a period of challenging unknowns together," Southerland told Cyclingnews in a telephone interview shortly after the team announced its new two-year deal.
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For a team that has scored only one UCI win since Novo Nordisk put its name across the jersey in 2013, renewing the sponsorship contract was not a slam dunk, and Southerland had to fight to make his case with the company's executives.
"It was tough for them and it was tough for us. We really had to prove our value as a team and how do we drive value to Novo Nordisk as a company," he said, adding that the team and the corporation came out of the recent negotiations with an even stronger relationship.
"We worked really hard with a small group of people to prove our case, and the CEO and executive management team for the first time in the past five years had unanimous support for the program going on," Southerland said. "So we've come out on the other side a lot stronger together as partners, and we've got some ambitious goals for how we're going to change diabetes in 2018 and beyond."
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