And so for the first time at this year’s Tour, riders from one — unnamed — team will aim to consume up to 20g of lactate per hour. Each sachet of ExoLactate gel contains 5g, along with 40g of carbohydrates. At a rate of four gels per hour — routine for a mountain stage — each rider would be ingesting more than eight times the volume of lactate produced by the body during intense efforts.
At present, a limited supply of gels has been manufactured — a trial batch numbering in the low tens of thousands — before general release after the Tour. When samples were sent to several teams, one demanded exclusivity. Despite the manufacturers’ initial refusal, the team simply offered to buy the entire supply at the going rate. This was unlikely to have been a cheap investment. It is expected that the gels will retail at about £5.
.In 2022, Tadej Pogacar’s UAE Team Emirates-XRG trialled a lactate solution mixed with 120g of carbohydrate, but not only did it contain insufficient lactate to be effective, but the riders also disliked the taste. “We’re not inventing lactate,” Viribay says. Their trick has been to create a product that athletes can actually stomach.
