This photo was taken at the 1968 Giro d’Italia. The rider is Felice Gimondi, the location San Remo, and we think it must have been taken for a magazine or newspaper feature.
The food on display isn’t one meal. The caption accompanying the photo says it shows the daily rations of a Giro d’Italia rider, and it’s worth analysing because it shows the nutritional thinking of the day. Some of it was quite modern, some less so.
Plenty of protein through steak, thick slices of beef and quite lot of ham. That’s modern. Protein features high in all endurance sports diets now, after carbohydrates were thought to be the secret sauce for a long time.
You don’t hear the term glycogen loading much now, and it was all the rage in the 1980s and 1990s. Cyclists in the grand tours are even consuming protein during stages. In modern scientifically delivered form, unlike the ham and cheeses baguettes that Gimondi would get in his mid-stage musette.
Carbs feature in the picture, though. A big bowl of rice plus plenty of bread, and what looks something like a Danish pastry on the plate furthest right. Italophiles, please let us know what it is. There are sugar lumps next to the coffee too.
Not much dairy. The white oblong slab in front of the steak plate Felice is tucking into looks like butter. We can’t see what’s in the Salvarani carrier bag, which contains the rations for the rider’s jersey pockets.
That leaves fruit and veg. There are plenty of oranges for vitamin c and fibre, and that could be a bowl of salad next to the fruit basket. But what does stand out is alcohol.
One bottle looks a lot like beer, and that’s definitely wine next to it. Most pro riders in those days drank far more than a modern pro would, but a whole bottle of wine seems a lot, maybe it was to share.
It didn’t seem to slow Felice down. He won the 50-kilometre time trial stage 16 and finished third overall, one place behind Salvarani team mate Vittoria Adorni. And the winner? That was Eddy Merckx, his first grand tour of 11 he would eventually win.
