FUELLING PIONEERS

Science in Sport is edging ever closer to their 30th birthday. As James Witts finds out, their longevity is thanks to evidence-based foundations…

- JAMES WITTS

I’m not sure if it was the lungs that went first or the heart. Or was it the legs? Either way, as the high-tech static bike cranked up wattage for this low-brow triathlete, oxygen remained at a premium. I blamed the uncomfortable plastic mask clamped against my sweaty visage; in reality, this fitness test had pushed me to my limits.

“This is the sort of test we undertake with participants during our trials and research into new products,” professor of exercise metabolism and director of performance solutions at Science in Sport (SiS), James Morton, had told me before the test. “It’s tough.” It is. Still, I’ll plunge the depths of physicality and humility, all in the name of discovering more about one of British sport’s most successful brands…

STARTED FROM THE KITCHEN

I’m in Liverpool at the acclaimed John Moores University to sample a taste of the credibility behind SiS’s research-and-development protocol. In the world of sports nutrition, it’s needed, with many manufacturers reportedly expending their near entire budget on marketing, reserving the miniscule leftovers for testing.

SiS must be doing something right. In an industry where brands flow and retreat like the tide, they’re nearly 30 years old. It’s gone down in nutritional folklore how sport-science graduate and Lancastrian Tim Lawson would spend the early 90s divvying up an economy-sized tub of maltodextrin upon his family’s kitchen table to sell to his cycling mates. The mixture went down well. Lawson was encouraged.