Phil Southerland is the cycling team owner and tech developer you’ve probably never heard of, but really should have. For more than 20 years he has used cycling to first keep himself alive and to then empower millions of others.
But, remarkably, he might never have had the opportunity to ride a bike at all. Aged just seven months old, he lost 40% of his body weight in one week, and every breath sounded like his last. “My mum thought she had a frail, dying baby in her arms,” the Florida-born American says. Doctors were stumped as to what the problem was and it was only when a nurse smelled his fruity breath and urged fellow medics to check his blood glucose levels that they got an answer – Southerland had type 1 diabetes, the world’s youngest person to be diagnosed as diabetic.
He was saved, but doctors warned his parents that he’d most likely be blind by 20 and dead by 25. He was instructed to take life-saving insulin before he could even walk and talk, but, unlike today,
