Breakfast of champions: Six Olympians share their training diet secrets

The road to the Olympics is paved with carbs.

An estimated 15,000 athletes are competing in Paris this summer. Most will arrive with detailed plans for what to eat before, during and after their events.

“Part of their training is their nutrition,” said Sarah Wick, a sports dietitian and the director of sports nutrition for the Ohio State Sports Medicine Institute. “It’s just like strength and conditioning. They need to know just what nutrition they need, and when they need it.”

High-performance athletes require plenty of carbohydrates for energy and enough protein to repair their muscles and recover between workouts. Every event and athlete has different needs, but they all require fuel, and lots of it. Still, that doesn’t mean they’re eating only health foods.

Usain Bolt, for one, estimated that he ate 100 McDonalds chicken nuggets each day at the 2008 Beijing Olympics because they were a familiar food he knew his stomach could handle. He went on to win three gold medals.

We asked a handful of Paris Olympians to share their food diaries and photos from a typical training week in the lead-up to the Games.

Here are their breakfast routines, along with a few other snack highlights.

Luke Willian, 28
Australia, triathlon

Some people say that triathletes need to master four sports: swimming, biking, running — and eating.

When Luke Willian woke up at 7.20am one day in July, he turned to his go-to breakfast: two cups of cornflakes with whole milk.

He followed this meal with a hard open-water swim, during which he drank an electrolyte sports drink with 50 grams of carbohydrates. (Athletes frequently keep nutrition on a nearby dock for easy access mid-swim, to prevent dehydration and cramping.)

After the swim, he ate two salami-and-cheese sandwiches and a cake bite at 10am for a mix of carbs and protein.

Then he was off for an “easy” nine-and-a-half kilometre run, followed by a quick protein shake — and then a trip to a cafe for a latte and a piece of cheesecake. This was all before 11.30am. Lunch would be in two hours.

“I’ve always been a big eater,” he said.

Sweet tooth: Willian ate five cookies during the day and a handful of gummy candies, too. Candy sits better in his stomach than gels or liquid carbohydrates, he said.

Haley Batten celebrates as she crosses the finish line to win silver in the women’s cross-country cycling mountain bike Gold Medal race on day two of the Paris Games.Credit: Getty Images

Haley Batten, 25
US, mountain biking

Haley Batten has a race-day favourite that she also eats before hard workouts: pancakes topped with bananas and maple syrup. They’re a good source of carbohydrates, she said. She usually eats roughly two to three hours before training or competing.

By 10am, she’s on the bike. Her training sessions can include up to two to five hours of riding, so it’s crucial to bring some fuel along. Batten usually opts for high-carbohydrate drink mix, gels or Pop-Tarts.

“There is no way to ‘fake it’ when you haven’t hit your carbohydrate targets on the bike,” she said, since you won’t be able to keep up the pace. She said she needs 90 to 120 grams of carbs per hour while riding to sustain her energy.

Post-ride treat: When Batten was a young athlete, her dad would buy her chocolate milk after rides. “It turns out, that was a great pro athlete nutrition strategy and recovery hack,” she said, thanks to the protein and carbs.

Asia Hogan-Rochester (right) in action against New Zealand during a rugby sevens pool match at the Paris Games.Credit: AP

Asia Hogan-Rochester, 25
Canada, rugby sevens

Rugby sevens, a form of rugby with smaller teams and shorter games, requires both power and endurance. In Paris, the Canadian team will compete in three games in two days.

Asia Hogan-Rochester became a professional rugby athlete in 2019 after competing in track and field through college. Hogan-Rochester, who uses she and they pronouns, said that changing sports prompted them to pay closer attention to nutrition, with a particular focus on eating enough carbs and protein.

At the athletes’ village in Paris last week, they sampled the offerings with carbs and protein intake top of mind: granola with almond milk, watermelon, a croissant, yoghurt and a few sides of chicken dim sum sausage, brie cheese and veggie pierogies.

At home, a typical breakfast for Hogan-Rochester is overnight oats with protein powder, almond milk, fresh fruit and a mix of almond butter or Nutella. On one recent training day, they had that breakfast at 8am, an hour before a weight training session. A second breakfast — a bagel with cream cheese — was 30 minutes later.

Road snacks: Hogan-Rochester’s go-to travel snacks are Heavenly Hunks cookies, Clif bars, Goldfish, chips and sour gummy worms.

CJ Allen lines up for the men’s 400m hurdles final at the 2024 Diamond League - Herculis in Monaco in July.Credit: Getty Images

CJ Allen, 29
US, track and field

CJ Allen, a 400-metre hurdler, finished in second place at the Olympic trials to qualify for the Paris Games. Had anything gone even slightly awry, he would be staying home: less than 15 one-hundredths of a second separated Allen from fourth place. Only the top three athletes qualify.

Since every millisecond counts, he brings precision to his meal planning.

Most mornings he drinks a blended coffee, which combines a remarkable list of ingredients: French press coffee, cordyceps fungus, MCT oil, grass-fed butter, grass-fed whole milk or cream, pure vanilla extract, Ceylon cinnamon, collagen peptides, a cacao LMNT electrolyte packet, peppermint essential oil and local raw honey.

He pairs his coffee with a “high-protein whole food,” he said. One day in early July, he chose a bacon, egg and parmesan quiche with butternut squash crust.

Homemade bone broth: Allen makes his own bone broth, which he includes in his afternoon post-training meal. He makes big batches: 4.5 kilograms of marrow bones with 11 other ingredients, including celery stalks and sweet onions.

Kasra Mehdipournejad (right) and Iman Mahdavi of the Refugee Olympic Team pose for a photo at the opening ceremony of the Paris Games.Credit: David Burnett/IOC

Kasra Mehdipournejad, 31
Iranian competing for the Refugee Olympic Team, taekwondo

Kasra Mehdipournejad started a recent day around 7am, with a breakfast of banana pancakes with raspberries and blueberries.

Three hours later, he snacked on cherries, blueberries and peaches, along with a boiled egg. At 10.30am, exactly an hour before a strength training session with free weights, he had a shot of espresso. He took a beta-alanine supplement, which he believes helps increase his endurance, 45 minutes before the workout, he said. (Some research has found that beta-alanine may improve athletic performance, but more research is needed on how it affects endurance.)

Taekwondo competitors are divided by weight class, so many athletes are particularly attuned to what they eat. Mehdipournejad works with a nutritionist to incorporate foods he enjoys into his diet, including traditional Iranian dishes.

Comfort food: On a recent evening, he chose a home-cooked meal of zereshk polo, an Iranian rice dish made with saffron, berries and chicken.

Chuck Aoki, 33
US, Paralympic wheelchair rugby

Paralympic rugby games can last from 90 minutes to two hours, and they demand lots of explosive movement. Players can slam themselves into each other, sometimes bringing their opponents to a full stop. Getting a chair, which can weigh more than 18kg, moving at top speed again takes tremendous strength and endurance.

So Chuck Aoki regularly eats two breakfasts.

One recent morning, his first meal was fruit and yoghurt, around 7am.

His second, more substantial breakfast was turkey sausage, hash browns and scrambled eggs with hot sauce. Aoki feels less hungry throughout the day, so it’s important for him to consume more calories early on.

Quick sugar: “Gels are too slimy for me,” Aoki said. So when he needs a sugar hit mid-game, he reaches for Skittles instead.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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