Olof Sköld was in a small, hip bike shop in Paris last summer when conversation turned to something odd that people had noticed while watching Tour de France coverage. “Everybody was talking about [Primož] Roglič,” Sköld recalls. “He’s eating soup before racing! There must be some doping in it!” Tour de France riders burn as much as 8,000 calories a day, so they’re famous for hoovering down energy in every available form. But slurping soup before a race was, admittedly, unusual. Sköld, the CEO of Swedish sports nutrition company Maurten, knew exactly what was in the soup, but he wasn’t telling—yet.
Back in 2016, Maurten made a big splash with their new carbohydrate drink, which claimed to ease the pangs of digesting large quantities of sugar during hard exercise by encapsulating it in a hydrogel. Simple carbohydrates are the primary fuel for high-intensity exercise, and top endurance athletes aim to take 60, or 90, or even 120 grams—the equivalent of almost five gels—for every hour of racing. It doesn’t go down easily. “If you went to New York or any of the big marathons back in 2015, they…
