Diabetes not holding Hamish Beadle back

Southland cyclist Hamish Beadle is a proud advocate for living your best life despite being affected by diabetes.

The 20-year-old was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at only three years of age and doesn't remember a time when he didn’t have the condition - but that hasn’t stopped him pursuing his dream of becoming a professional bike rider.

Beadle has spent the past two years riding for the Team Novo Nordisk Pro Cycling development team and hopes to go back for a third in 2019, before pushing onto the professional ranks.

Photo: Southland’s Hamish Beadle racing for the Team Novo Nordisk development team. Pic: ©TeamNovoNordisk

Team Novo Nordisk is a global all-diabetes sports team of cyclists spearheaded by the world’s first all-diabetes professional cycling team.

The team’s mission is to inspire, educate and empower everyone affected by diabetes.

“It’s pretty cool to be part of a team that has that message of inspiring, educating and empowering people affected by diabetes globally,” Beadle said.

“I wear that message on my back, riding or not, and I wear it with pride everyday.”

Beadle has learnt to manage his diabetes as an elite bike rider.

“At the end of the day, you are still a cyclist and a bad day is a bad day. It does make things a bit more tricky for us, but you try not to make excuses,” he said.

“It’s a fine line between managing things and having a bad day, which can set you off for a few days. It’s majorly important to be on top of things. We are fortunate enough to partner with a company called Dexcom, they make continuous blood glucose monitors and we are able to wear those devices pretty much 24/7 and that gives us a lot of data to look at and from there we can tweak things accordingly.”

Beadle’s confidence has grown during his time overseas, which includes racing in the United States and Europe.

“I’m a lot more experienced, I just need to build the engine a bit more. In those bigger races there is almost a hierarchy in the bunch. You have to earn your respect and it’s pretty hard when you turn up to those races in Europe and no one knows who you are and you don’t know anyone else, it’s pretty brutal. In the US, I’ve gotten way more confident with the criterium-based calendar that they have.”

Beadle is loving the opportunity to travel the world while racing his bike, and he’s proud of other Southland riders of his age who are also making an impact.

“It’s unreal. Being from Southland, there’s guys like Corbin Strong, Hayden Strong and Tom Sexton - we’ve been doing this since we were eight and you look at how far we have come,” he said.

“Hayden has been racing while he’s at university in the US for two years, Corbin is a world champ, Tom is in the New Zealand track team and I’m over in the US as well, it’s really cool.”