When Joanna Southerland held her seven-month-old son's drooping head and heard his wheezing breath, she didn't know one day he would become a champion cyclist and a beacon for thousands diagnosed with diabetes. She just wanted him to live.
Said Southerland, "I was convinced he was going to die."
Phil Southerland's rescue came with a diagnosis of Type 1 diabetes, a disease caused by the body's inability to produce insulin, which the body needs to absorb glucose. It is treatable with insulin injections, proper diet and monitoring of blood sugar levels. Over time, his mother realized the more he played and exercised, the better he could control his blood sugar.
It led him to bicycle racing and ownership of his own professional team with Type 1 diabetes sufferers on the roster, Team Type 1. In just five years, Southerland, a Georgia graduate who lives in Atlanta, has raised Team Type 1 from an idea into one of the top 40 cycling teams in the world.
In the 2011 season, Team Type 1 will compete as a Pro Continental team, the International Cycling Union's second-highest classification, where the team can race against the likes of Lance Armstrong's RadioShack team. Southerland's goal is to earn an invitation into the May Giro d'Italia, the second-biggest bike race in the world after the Tour de France. In 2012, Southerland will aim for the Tour de France.
"My disease has been the greatest teacher to me for life," said Southerland, 28. "I look at diabetes as the greatest thing that has ever happened to me."
What Team Type 1 has achieved is testament to Southerland's vision and his capacity to pursue it. In 2003, as a Georgia student, Southerland met Joe Eldridge at a college bike race. Both diabetics, they struck up a friendship. However, Southerland worried about Eldridge's poor management of his condition. To motivate him, Southerland challenged him to a bet in which the one with the higher blood sugar paid for dinner, which they called the "Burrito Bet."
When they met up at races, Southerland routinely won until Eldridge monitored his blood sugar more frequently, properly injected himself with insulin and improved his diet. When Eldridge finally won, he thanked Southerland for changing his life. It changed Southerland's, as well.
"Having watched this, I realized it feels good to make a difference," he said.
The two formed a team, which Southerland used as a business school project to develop in 2005. They pointed to the Race Across America, a non-stop coast-to-coast bike race. In 2006, Team Type 1 came in second by minutes. The next year, the team won, easily finishing first in five days, 15 hours, 43 minutes.
On the victory podium, Southerland announced that "We're going to put a Type 1 diabetic in the Tour de France, and we're going to do it by 2012."
Southerland's track changed in late 2009, when he developed a circulation condition in his leg that forced him out of riding but gave him more time to manage the team. Going into the upcoming season, the roster includes 21 riders from 11 countries who have won Olympic medals and world championships.
"It's been quick, but it's also been steady and it's also been very well planned out," said Chris Aronhalt, managing partner of Atlanta-based Medalist Sports, a race management company.
Team Type 1 now, though, is far more than a bike team. It sponsors a women's professional team, an elite amateur team, a Type 2 diabetes team, a triathlon team and a development team made up solely of young cyclists with Type 1 diabetes who live and train in Cumming.
The men's pro team took part in a race in Rwanda in November, using that opportunity to bring diabetes management supplies and educate diabetes sufferers and caregivers.
The team has also developed a research arm, using the riders as test subjects to determine the best practices for managing diabetes and producing high performance.
"We would like to do some work both with the team to help the team but I think also to translate that work to everyday practice to help create guidelines," said Juan Frias, formerly the chief medical officer for diabetes care for Johnson & Johnson.
Team Type 1 has 35 staff members and 101 athletes. Southerland plans to open an office in Italy. The budget for the year, much of it coming from team sponsor Sanofi-Aventis, a French pharmaceutical company, is $10 million.
Its ultimate impact, though, won't be measured in podium finishes and victories. Southerland and Eldridge see the team as a platform to change lives, to show diabetics that with proper care the disease does not have to be a burden. Their growing fan base includes children like Tess Anderson, an aspiring 10-year-old cyclist with Type 1 diabetes. Tess, from South Elgin, Ill., met Team Type 1 riders when they raced in suburban Chicago.
"I think she just knows she can do whatever she wants to do," Tess' mother Anne Marie said. "She just has to take care of herself."
Both have traveled extensively, telling their story and meeting children like Tess.
Said Eldridge, "The impact that we get to make on the kids with Type 1, it's the greatest thing in the world for a job I could have."
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