Over the past few years there has been a complete revolution when it comes to nutrition in pro cycling and it feels like the key words are 120 grams of carbs per hour during racing. The experimenting and successful implementation of a different kind of feeding allowed riders to put out stronger performances and Simon Yates – who has lost the 2018 Giro d’Italia due to exhaustion that he no longer feels – believes it is a completely different world.
“The sport is much healthier now. I enjoy cycling much more now than I did seven or eight years ago. Before this huge carbohydrate trend came along, it was the opposite,” Yates shared with Velo. “It was low in carbohydrates, saving your carbohydrates, and that was hard, not only for the mind, but also for your body. You were just tired all the time. You were constantly tired”.
Yates, a climber and stage-racer for almost a decade now at the highest level, sees the difference in himself and in his rivals when comparing to those years. Whereas in the past riders struggled a lot more to be consistent, save weight and be cautious with their intake of certain things – nowadays the focus is actually more on getting riders to eat past a certain amount. “I remember that after tough stages I just had to lie down on the bed, completely exhausted. Now, after a tough stage, you feel it in your legs, but you don’t feel any deficiency in your body,” he says.
“Now you don’t feel any kind of deficiency. In the past it was much lower in carbohydrates. Two eggs for breakfast and then on the road, five to six hours, water in the bottles. Now we have a mountain of rice for breakfast, 120 grams of carbohydrates per hour, it has changed. Now it is all a lot of carbohydrates.” This has been given as one of the main reasons why in recent years performances are skyrocketing in the peloton, with Yates being one such rider.
Who knows, perhaps if he had his current nutrition plan back in 2018, he would’ve been able to win the Giro d’Italia. That year, he completely collapsed on the final days of the race at the Colle delle Finestre, a shocking implosion that not only saw him lose the race lead, but not even feature close to the Top10 in the end. Nowadays, virtually no-one suffers from that he says: “Nobody gets a hunger knock anymore. You never see anyone completely collapse anymore.”