Phelps, who has 17 Olympic medals to his name, eats a whopping breakfast before a race: three fried egg sandwiches, with cheese, tomatoes, lettuce, fried onions and mayonnaise; a five-egg omelette; three sugar-coated slices of French toast, a bowl of grits (a maize-based porridge), two cups of coffee – and three of those chocolate-chip pancakes. After a lunch and dinner of pasta and huge pizzas, his daily calorie intake is around 12,000 (the average man only needs 2,500).
I fear that Rose Prince has missed the denials of this story.
He does eat a lot, he\’s a big lad doing a lot of exercise. But 12,000 calories a day just ain\’t it. More like 6,000.
Perhaps the most peculiar Olympic diet of all is one high in carbohydrate-rich gels. Watching the final stages of the women’s road race, we saw the cyclists digging in their Lycra pockets for these little packs; tearing the wrapping with their teeth and sucking out the contents. Gels provide an instant hit of energy. Robbie Renwick, the British swimmer, takes gel shots 30 minutes before a race for a vital last-minute burst. They contain organic sugars,
Err, please, can someone tell me what is a \”non-organic\” sugar?
I fear that if she\’s not careful Ms. Prince could turn into the Geoffrey Lean of food reporting.
When I read ‘carbohydrate-rich gels,’ I thought she was talking about Zara Phillips.
Hell, I remember surviving a trip around the Brecon Beacons with those lucozade glucose tabs – quick and easy energy. Just enough to perk you up and make you not-quite-forget you were carrying about half your own weight: I was much lighter back then 🙁 .
Maybe they mean “organic” in the “obsolete farming methods” sense rather than the chemical one.