Ping-pong club d’Oude Palette presented this week a check for 750 euros to Axel De Muyt, one of their members who is also general manager of Novo Nordisk, the largest insulin producer in the world. From Saturday 11 to Thursday 16 June he will cycle to the Galibier together with 17 diabetes patients for the benefit of Cycling 4 Diabetes.
D’Oude Palette is a table tennis club in Ypres with just under thirty members who play a ball every Monday evening in the Family Circle room in Crescendostraat. Together with the other members, chairman Guy Werquin recently celebrated the club’s fiftieth anniversary. “With our ping-pong club, we occasionally sponsor projects for charity”, says Guy Werquin, himself a veterinarian and chairman of the Ypres animal shelter. “This year we chose to support the Cycling for Diabetes Climbing for Life 2022 project. A wonderful initiative of which one of our members, Ypresling Axel De Muyt, is ambassador.”
8,500 altimeters
“We have been cycling up a well-known mountain every year with the Diabetesliga, the patients’ association for people with diabetes,” says Axel. “Three years ago it was the Stelvio in Italy, this year we are going to the Galibier in France. We always do this with patients who have not yet cycled and whom we prepare for this arduous bike ride, to show that you can still participate in sports with diabetes.”
Actually we are more of a friends club than a sports club
“This year we want to do something special. From Saturday 11 to Thursday 16 June we will cycle with 17 members of the Diabetes Liga Cycling Team and five supervisors from the Diabetes House in Ghent to the foot of the Galibier in Valloire. There we will participate in Climbing for Life from Friday 17 June, together with our other team members of the Diabetes Liga Cycling Team. This tough sporting challenge is good for 900 kilometers and 8,500 vertical meters. We will cover this journey in 6 stages.”
Customized camps and holidays
“With this project we want to put diabetes in the spotlight”, continues Axel. “But we also want to collect money for children and young people with diabetes who are struggling financially. We want to give them the opportunity to participate in sports camps and tailor-made holidays through the collected funds. These holidays have been organized for years by the Diabetes League and play an important role for these children and young people to live with diabetes in a qualitative way. They learn from each other, are supported and can enjoy themselves carefree with their peers.”
Axel does not have diabetes himself, but as general manager of the pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk he feels very involved with the people who have the condition. “Novo Nordisk was founded in 1923 following the launch of insulin, which was discovered a year earlier. So next year we will be 100 years old. We are now a company that produces half the world’s supply of insulin and other medicines for patients with diabetes. We are also active in other areas, but the core of our work is still the diabetics.”
Logo on cycling jersey
Axel De Muyt has been working in the pharmaceutical industry for thirty years. “I am not a pharmacist by training, but a physiotherapist,” he says. “At the time, I started as a medical representative at the Belgian company UCB. I’ve had various positions in marketing and sales, and that’s how I was able to grow into the position I have now. In the meantime I have been working for Novo Nordisk for 4.5 years, but as a native of Ypres I have continued to live in Ypres, even though I drive to Brussels almost every day for work.”
Axel finds it special that his friends from d’Oude Palette are now sponsoring him. “It is quite unique that a sports club sponsors, usually companies. Hence the d’Oude Palette logo on my cycling jersey. Very nice that all members of the ping pong club were willing to contribute. That also illustrates that we are a close group of friends. We are actually more of a club of friends than a sports club,” Axel concludes.