Team Type 1 - Sanofi won five stages and the over­all clas­si­fi­ca­tion at the Tour of the Rwanda as they helped spread the mes­sage about dia­betes across Africa.

Colnago is proud to have sup­ported the team dur­ing the Tour of Rwanda and through­out the 2011 sea­son as they com­bined pro­fes­sional rac­ing and a pro­gramme of dia­betes awareness.

Kiel Reijnen suc­cess­fully defended the leader’s yel­low jer­sey dur­ing the final 130km stage to the Rwandan cap­i­tal Kigali, cel­e­brat­ing over­all vic­tory with his arms in the air. Team Type 1 - Sanofi fin­ished one-two in the over­all clas­si­fi­ca­tion, with Joseph Rosskopf fin­ish­ing just two sec­onds behind his teammate.

Reijnen strug­gled with ill­ness dur­ing much of 2011 but ended his sea­son on a high.

“This race was tough but every day my team­mates got out there and rode their legs off to keep this jer­sey for me. I’m really glad to be back healthy, rac­ing like nor­mal again. I hope Rwanda is just the first of a long list of good things to come with Team Type 1,” Reijnen said.

Team Type 1 - Sanofi car­ried out a hugely suc­cess dia­betes edu­ca­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion pro­gram dur­ing the Tour of Rwanda.

“Rwanda’s Ministry of Health and the Rwanda Diabetes Association helped us to orga­nize meet­ings every day at the fin­ish, and we had hun­dreds of peo­ple with type 1 and type 2 dia­betes come and lis­ten to Dr. Steve Edelman talk about the power of good con­trol. What we heard from these peo­ple every day was hum­bling,” CEO and Team Type 1 - Sanofi founder Phil Southerland said.

After return­ing from Rwanda, Team Type 1 - Sanofi will begin plan­ning for more suc­cess dur­ing the 2012 season.

Sven Nys proved he is still the fastest fin­isher in cyclo-cross, win­ning the third round of the World Cup in Belgium and then just 24 hours later the fifth round of the Superprestige Series in the Netherlands.

Nys beat Kevin Pauwels to win both races. The first sprint was marked by con­tro­versy, with Pauwels lament­ing he had been squeezed against the bar­ri­ers. But race offi­cials reviewed the sprint and con­firmed Nys as the winner.

Just 24 hours later, the two clashed again on a muddy course in Gieten, Belgium. After a fast start, Nys changed his Colnago bike mid-race to have bet­ter grip on the cor­ners. He then pow­ered clear, with only Pauwels able to hold his wheel, but he did not have the speed to beat Nys in the final sprint.

“Pauwels drew level with me, but I could sense that he wouldn’t be able to keep going even if I was sprint­ing at full gas into the head­wind,” an emo­tional Nys said after being con­grat­u­lated by his nine-year-old son Tibeau.

Team Type 1-Sanofi has won yet another stage at the Tour of Rwanda, tak­ing their total to four from four.

After the suc­cess of Kiel Reijnen in the pro­logue and the open­ing two stages, Joey Rosskopf grabbed the spot­light by win­ning the hilly third stage from Kigali to Gisenyi. He used his descend­ing skills to attack a front group and then pow­ered clear on his Colnago to win alone.

Rosskopf is a sta­giaire rider with Team Type 1-Sanofi this year but has already proven his tal­ent and is set to be a full mem­ber of the Team Type 1-Sanofi team in 2012.

The 22 year-old from Athens, Georgia, is the new over­all race leader of the Tour of Rwanda. He has a 47-second lead on Gasore Hategeka of the Rwanda national team as the key moun­tain stages approach.

Team Type 1 rid­ers dom­i­nated the pro­logue time trial at the Tour of Rwanda, with Kiel Reijnen win­ning the stage and Joey Rosskopf and Ty Magner fin­ish­ing sec­ond and third.

Reijnen cov­ered the four-kilometre pro­logue around Kigali in a time of 4:22. He beat team mate Rosskopf by eight sec­onds, with Magner third at ten sec­onds. All three raced on their Colnago road bikes.

Reijnen has strug­gled with ill­ness for most of the year and his vic­tory was a way of thank­ing Team Type 1 for their support.

“To win was impor­tant for me, to show my thanks to Team Type 1 - SANOFI for stand­ing by when I couldn’t even ride my bike for an hour,” Reijnen said.

Team Type 1 will now tar­get over­all suc­cess in the Tour of Rwanda but the US team is in Africa with more than just bike rac­ing on its agenda. The Atlanta-based orga­ni­za­tion also packed more than 100,000 donated dia­betes test strips, 200 blood glu­cose meters and 10,000 lanc­ing devices to help the 650 chil­dren with dia­betes in the African country.

“We’ve come back to try and win the race, but our big­ger goal is to train health care work­ers on dia­betes aware­ness and to put the right sup­plies into the right hands to give these kids a chance,” Team Type 1 - SANOFI CEO Phil Southerland explained.

Team Type 1 - Sanofi will end its first sea­son as a Professional Continental squad at the Tour of Rwanda in Africa, com­bin­ing their pur­suit of suc­cess in cycling with its out­reach pro­gramme and dona­tion of med­ical sup­plies to chil­dren with dia­betes in the cen­tral African country.

Team Type 1 – Sanofi will field a six-man team in the week­long race that begins on Sunday November 20 in Kigali. The team will include Alex Bowden -who has type 1 dia­betes, Will Dugan, Ty Magner, Kiel Reijnen, Joey Rosskopf and Alexey Shmidt.

Team Type 1 - Sanofi is the men’s pro­fes­sional cycling squad of the non-profit orga­ni­za­tion that focuses on dia­betes aware­ness and edu­ca­tion. Colnago is the offi­cial bike spon­sor of the team.

Last year Team Type 1 pre­sented the Rwanda Diabetes Association with more than 35,000 test strips and 400 blood glu­cose meters, donated by fans and sup­port­ers. This year the team will bring in more donated sup­plies and make daily stops in local communities.

“We’ve packed up 200 blood glu­cose meters, 100,000 donated test strips and more than 10,000 lanc­ing devices to bring with us into Kigali, and we’re com­mit­ted to see­ing that every one of the 650 kids in Rwanda with type 1 dia­betes gets enough sup­plies to man­age and con­trol his or her dis­ease for a year,” Team Type 1 –Sanofi CEO Phil Southerland said.

Team Europcar has finalised its 25-rider ros­ter for the 2012 sea­son as it aims to build on the incred­i­ble suc­cess achieved in 2011. The French team will again ride Colnago C59 Italia bikes in 2012.

Team man­ager Jean-Rene Bernaudeau has retained the core of the team that won 22 races in 2011, includ­ing team leader Thomas Voeckler, who wore the yel­low jer­sey at the Tour de France for ten days, best young rider and stage win­ner at the Tour de France Pierre Rolland and French national time trial cham­pion Christophe Kern.

Japan’s Yukiya Arashiro, French sprinter Sebastien Chavanel and the hugely tal­ented Cyril Gautier will also be part of the more inter­na­tional team ros­ter. New sign­ings for 2012 include Tunisia’s Rafâa Chtioui, young Italian sprinter Matteo Pelucchi, Germany’s Björn Thurau, Italy’s Davide Malacarne and France’s Angelo Tulik.

“Our main objec­tives for the year will be Paris-Nice, the Dauphiné and the Tour de France but we also want to make more of an impact in the Spring clas­sics,” Bernaudeau explained.

The team will hold its first train­ing camp of the win­ter on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, the home of rider Yohann Gene.