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Team Jumbo-Visma has announced that Supersapiens will continue as an official supplier to the men’s and women’s teams.
Supersapiens, powered by Abbott’s Libre Sense Glucose Sport Biosensor, has been working with Team Jumbo-Visma since its launch in 2020. The US-based company delivers innovative insights around glucose data to help athletes make informed nutrition decisions around training and recovery.
Supersapiens’ science team has worked closely with Team Jumbo-Visma’s performance staff and riders to develop a series of innovations. The primary strategy has been to focus on specific areas of intervention for meaningful and actionable objectives. The key approach is to target a narrow and simple objective to better understand the context and any potential actionable insights.
One of the main scientific areas was the relationship between pre-race meals and glucose levels during exercise. This was done individually to better understand the subjective response to quantity and timing of carbohydrate intake before exercise in relation to glucose response. Another area of understanding was around the relationship between training load and overnight glucose control to target specific nutritional interventions aimed at improving glucose levels during sleep based on training schedule.
Asker Jeukendrup, head of nutrition at Team Jumbo-Visma and sports nutrition scientist, said: “We use Supersapiens to confirm that our nutrition strategies achieve what we think they should achieve. It also allows us to turn general recommendations into more personalised advice. It is the difference between hoping to improve metabolism with nutrition to measuring it.”
The partnership aims to continue providing Team Jumbo-Visma with the best working directions to optimise the training environment while focusing on specific performance goals that are actionable and relevant to improving day-to-day exercise capacity for each rider.
Supersapiens CEO and founder Phil Southerland, said: “Our strategic partnership with leading teams like Team Jumbo-Visma enables us to work with the world’s best athletes, performance staff, and scientists. The close relationship between Team Jumbo-Visma and Supersapiens allowed us first to validate the impact of CGM as a necessary tool for performance, and then to innovate and deliver new features, such as the Coaches Dashboard which further enhance the ability to personalise nutrition for performance.
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“Supersapiens is dedicated to R&D and we invest significant resources to improve the quality and performance of our products. We are excited to continue working with Team Jumbo-Visma as together we strive to win races.”
Supersapiens launched to the public in September 2020 and the Supersapiens system, including Abbott’s Libre Sense Glucose Sport Biosensor, allows athletes to automatically receive their glucose levels every minute to the Supersapiens app via Bluetooth. This data can be viewed on Supersapiens app or their groundbreaking wearable device, the Supersapiens Energy Band.
