This Lactate Energy Gel Could Transform Tour de France Fueling

Sport scientists and expert chefs have cooked up a groundbreaking energy gel that will transform the future of the Tour de France.

At least, that’s according to Aitor Virbay, the brains behind “ExoLactate,” an energy gel made with lactate.

Yes, lactate.

That’s the same “lactate” that was once thought of as the villain of exercise physiology.

The molecule we thought made your muscles sting so bad you’d stop, and which left you disabled with DOMS for days.

“This [product] will be a competitive advantage that no one has today,” Viribay said this week from an ExoLactate launch event.

“Lactate is unquestionably the best substrate for the body, the purest, because it is born from our own effort,” Viribay said according to reporting by El País.

“We have finally been able to overcome a barrier that others have been trying to break down for 50 years and cook exogenous lactate gels with glucose and fructose, the basic fuels of endurance sports.

“It will be one of the most promising tools of modern cycling,” Viribay added. “It will redefine metabolism in the most demanding race in the world.”

Hold it right there. Haven’t we heard this all before?

Nutrition trends fire up and fizzle out with every Tour de France cycle.

However, this one might be different.

Here’s why.

Lactate is not the bad guy

Viribay is a sport scientist who was on staff with Ineos Grenadiers and is now a performance director at the Salomon ultra-running team.

The Basque expert helped push the high-carbohydrate fueling revolution – Velo spoke with him during our breaking reporting on the topic.

Viribay now claims to have solved a puzzle that perplexed nutrition scientists throughout the century – how to supplement the working body with lactate.

Because lactate is not the bad guy it was once thought to be.

Far from it.

“Lactate is not a waste product,” Viribay said. “It is a crucial metabolic messenger that the body uses to sustain performance in the most demanding moments.”

Supplementing with lactate serves a purpose across all energy intensities.

At low effort, exogenous lactate promotes fat burning, helping the body preserve carbohydrate stores for when they’re needed most. At higher workout intensities, it inhibits fat oxidation and pushes carbs higher in the fueling mix. This gives the body a rich source of fast energy to attack, sprint, and win races.

Lactate also has a crucial role in nervous regulation – and that makes it crucial to athletes who need to dig deep in the fifth hour of Paris-Roubaix or the fourth mountain of an Alpine “queen stage.”

“Lactate is the main substrate for the nervous system and the brain. That in turn, makes it the maximum limiter of performance,” Viribay said.

“You don’t stop running because you run out of energy. It’s because the brain says, ‘my nervous system is exhausted,’ and the order to contract doesn’t reach the muscle.

“I think that’s one of the reasons why lactate improves performance after a lot of fatigue,” he continued. “With more fuel for the brain, there’s less stress, less waste of energy. More performance.”

So lactate is far from being exercise enemy number 1.

It’s in fact one of the most important – and benevolent – substrates in sport.

It makes athletes metabolically efficient, better focused, and more able to sustain higher power outputs for longer periods.

Solving a decades-old puzzle

Scientists have long puzzled over how to supplement with lactate.

A “Polylactate” product launched in 2002 was found to be inedible and near-useless.

But that didn’t stop UAE Emirates-XRG – the team of Tadej Pogačar – from trying it out.

El País reported that “Team Pog” tried mixing Polylactate with a high dose of carbohydrate but soon gave up. It tasted foul and contained so little lactate that there was little point.

But now it seems that Viribay – a metabolism and physiology PhD – has solved the mystery.

Viribay collaborated with a culinary scientist and gastronomy expert in a project called “Lab to Field” to create ExoLactate, a gel that provides high doses of paletable lactate.

“I had been obsessed for seven years with finding a way to break the barrier of how to administer lactate,” Viribay said this week from a product launch event in Barcelona.

“With the help of the fusion of physical chemistry and avant-garde cuisine, we found a solution to ingest it that will make a difference in the next Tour de France.”

ExoLactate has already gotten the green light from food regulation authorities, and according to Viribay, will pass the scrutiny of doping panels.

It’s a purely natural product, after all.

Tested on elites and in production

Viribay said ExoLactate has been lab-tested with elite runners, cyclists, and skiers, and is in production now.

As a performance director at Salomon, he has some very elite guinea pigs at his disposal – ultramarathon GOAT Courtney Dauwalter and SkiMo / trail superstar Remi Bonnet are among those on his watch.

Velo has reached out to Viribay to learn more about this product and the next steps.

However, the short-term takeaway seems to be that lactate gels might be exploding the pro peloton, very soon.