For the past ten years, scientific progress has kept on revolutionizing professional cycling. Nutrition totally joined this phenomenon, and the Groupama-FDJ cycling team has jumped on the bandwagon, especially by partnering with the WINFORCE brand. Lucas Papillon, the team’s nutritionist, brings us to this constantly evolving world.
Lucas, can you tell us more about the evolution of nutrition in professional cycling?
We’ve seen a real boom in the past six-seven years. Many scientific pieces have started to appear on the matter, particularly on high carbohydrate intake during exercise and on recovery nutrition strategies. All these scientific advances in nutritional approaches have taken place following several events, like the Olympic Games. For example, we previously considered that carbohydrate intakes during exercise had only an energetic purpose, but through all the studies that have been carried out, we realized that they also had functional roles on immunity, on performance, on the way the body can regulate waste, on muscle damages, etc. In this approach of better feeding athletes during exercise, brands had to update and develop accordingly, because energetic products were quite archaic just a decade ago. The progress was therefore combined with, on the one hand, the nutritional strategies for sports established by nutritionists or studied in scientific monitoring, and the possibility that the sports nutrition market offered. Brands had to collaborate to manufacture products that could reach the desired goals. In an era where everything is developing, such as data, training, nutrition has also become one of the fundamentals of performance and health. It’s therefore logical that processes evolve, that knowledge develops, and that we ultimately manage to implement increasingly precise and individualized solutions that help the athlete’s health and performance.
« It’s a total collaboration »
In what context and with what perspectives did the partnership with WINFORCE start?
When we decided to increase our athletes’ energy intake during exercise to meet their needs, we quickly encountered difficulties. Due to gastric issues, digestive disorders, or intolerances, it’s not so simple to provide the right energy intake for athletes during exercise. We therefore needed to get closer to a brand that had research and development capabilities but was also interested in collaborative approaches to develop energy gels, bars, and powders that would meet our needs; namely high-quality energy products to provide large amounts of energy during exercise, which are digestible, which help hydration, and which can be taken several days in a row during a stage race.
We then met WINFORCE, which is a brand whose policy is completely adapted to our needs. For them, the goal is really to offer premium quality and to free themselves a bit from the general public’s concerns. Their ambition is to develop products adapted to very, very high-level sport. It is a total collaboration. If we need a product that does not exist, they can develop it from start to finish with a complete collaboration on the technical specification sheet. On certain matters, this allowed us to start from scratch and get to final products that are completely in line with our needs, whether pre-effort, during exercise, or recovery.
How important is this R&D collaboration with WINFORCE?
First of all, such collaborations don’t happen often because the brands generally need to grow and survive by selling products to everyone. If you need a high-quality, highly specific product that isn’t necessarily useful to people who aren’t at the highest level, developing it can be tedious and costly, for it to ultimately reach only a very small public. Our advantage, compared to 95% of the brands on the market, is that we are exactly WINFORCE’s target audience. They truly have this desire to meet the needs of very, very high-level athletes, even if it means developing products for which the market is quite limited. If we had worked with other brands, we would certainly have encountered obstacles. WINFORCE has never said no to any product request. If we have an idea for a new gel, with a specific type of dietary supplement, this, or that, they’re always up for it, we launch an R&D project, and we manufacture it. Conversely, other teams are forced to source specific products from suppliers other than their official partner.
« Their goal is truly to make products that are suitable for high-level cycling »
In concrete terms, how do you work with WINFORCE? ?
The collaboration is very smooth because WINFORCE is a family business, even if they keep on growing. The boss is also the engineering contact, which allows for very direct conversations with very little inertia. Concretely, we conduct R&D reviews on what we need and the things we’ve noticed about the use of the products, and any potential limitations. For example, the energy powder is the product we’ve worked on the most. The powder had precise specifications: it had to be low in sugar so as not to feel nauseous, have a good osmolarity to maintain good hydration, have several types of sugars to avoid any gastric problems, etc. Based on these precise and technical specifications, WINFORCE bring their knowledge. They develop the product, send it to us, then we carry out tolerance tests, glycemic monitoring to see if what we have scientifically defined shows results on the field. If we see that the sugar is absorbed too quickly, we scientifically study what needs to be corrected, we do other meetings, and we adjust the specifications. Then WINFORCE develops a slightly different formula, sends us a new product, which we re-test, until we obtain a product that we consider functional and in line with the pre-established specifications.
What successes have already resulted from this collaboration ?
There are some very meaningful examples. We developed the energy powder we use today nearly three and a half years ago, and it’s only been commercially available for a year. The gels were marketed two years after we started using them. This really shows the R&D approach and the desire to only release the product once it’s truly finished. We have products in development for two or three years, which we use, but which are still not commercially available. Their goal is truly to make products that are suitable for high-level cycling. In terms of exercise nutrition, we are now self-sufficient with WINFORCE products. I think we now have the best energy powder on the market from a technical standpoint, because we really had carte blanche over the specifications. We should also emphasise how quick we faced the challenges. At the beginning of our collaboration, WINFORCE was a high-quality brand but didn’t yet have energy gels. Yet, these are one of the basic products in a cyclist’s nutritional strategy for exercise. We had to start from scratch, and we quickly needed a premium-quality gel. In one year, we went from having no gels in the range to developing several types of gels of perfect quality. It’s a success. For a high-level team like ours, it’s a chance to work with a company that is so agile and open to challenges. If WINFORCE were in a league, they would be in the WorldTour too. We are truly aligned on high-performance objectives.
