What do the worlds toughest athletes eat ?

The Tour de France is arguably the worlds toughest endurance sport event. Day after day riding for hours, with gruelling mountain climbs, sometimes in sweltering heat. As you would expect, food is a very special part of these guys performance. Team Saxo-Tinkoff employ a head chef, Hannah Grant, to ensure the team operates at their best. She has some views you may find interesting.

Eddie

"First of all, I set the menu. I mean, they can request stuff, the riders, if they want. I’ll note it and I’ll do it if it’s possible. But, obviously, then there’s rules to how to assemble the menu. Today’s a rest day, so we do a low-carb lunch for them. They’re not going so far, they just want to keep their legs going, so we don’t want to fill them up too much. And we don’t want to go too hard on the carbs so they don’t gain weight.

Then we have a philosophy of using lots of vegetables, proteins, and cold-pressed fats, and then we use a lot of gluten-free alternatives. So we try to encourage the riders to try other things than just pasta and bread. I do gluten-free breads as well.

It’s all to minimize all the little things that can stop you from performing 100 percent, that promote injuries, stomach problems, all those things. So that’s a big difference (from cooking in a restaurant), because I have to follow all those rules. I can’t just cook whatever I think is amazing. It has to be within those guidelines."

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