Eating More To Gain Edge

'Starvation' days over with cyclists set to load up on carbs during Tour de France

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PARIS — Not so long ago, cyclists heading into the Tour de France were skinny string beans weighing and measuring every grain of rice that entered their body, but that image has not just gone; it has taken a seismic shift in the other direction.

The riders in 2025 will be gorging themselves like never before, taking in the equivalent of a large plate of pasta per hour and even training their stomachs to cope with this influx of food.

"Intake has doubled," Julien Louis, nutritionist for the Decathlon-AG2R team, told AFP.

In fact, it is a 180-degree turnaround from the 2010s and the "low carb" fad popularised by four-time Tour de France winner Chris Froome's Sky team.

This method deprives the body of sugars during training in order to lose weight and encourage the body to use fat for energy.

"Two eggs for breakfast and we were off for five to six hours of training, with water in the bottles. We were exhausted the whole time," recalls British veteran Simon Yates, winner of the Giro d'Italia in May.

Climber Pavel Sivakov paints an even more dramatic picture.

"Mentally, it was very hard," he says. "We were starving, with no energy, tapping into our fat."