Why Top Olympic Athletes Use Baking Soda to Boost Performance

August 28, 2024

Just a week before the Olympics, Arop decided to try something new—something that he’d never tried before but that, according to an anonymous Olympic runner quoted in the Telegraph, at least 80 percent of elite runners are now using: sodium bicarbonate, better known as baking soda. “I figured if everybody else is using it…” Arop said in his post-race interview. “And it’s been working wonders.”

That changed during the Olympics—not because of the scorching performances by Arop and others, but because researchers finally published a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial supporting Maurten’s claims. In the European Journal of Applied Physiology, a team at Edge Hill University in Britain led by Eli Spencer Shannon presented data showing a 1.4 percent boost for cyclists in a 40-kilometer time trial, which works out to a gain of roughly a minute over the course of an event lasting an hour. Outside Online