Gatorade returns to the WorldTour 10 years later

Lidl-Trek continues to strengthen its commitment to performance with an agreement that marks the return of Gatorade to professional cycling more than a decade later. The American brand, along with the Gatorade Sports Science Institute (GSSI), will be responsible for designing fully individualized hydration strategies for the team's roster starting in 2025.

Gatorade returns to the World Tour with Lidl-Trek

The agreement will allow each Lidl-Trek cyclist to have a hydration plan based on sweat analysis, physiological tests, and environmental conditions, a methodology that the GSSI has established in other elite sports. In modern cycling, where every watt counts, even a slight degree of dehydration can compromise decision-making ability, power, and effort tolerance.

Josu Larrazabal, the team's performance manager, summarizes it this way: the key is not to drink more, but to drink better. With the data obtained from each test, the replenishment of fluids, electrolytes, and carbohydrates will be adjusted individually, tailored to the workload and competition context.

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Although Gatorade has never left professional sports, this is its first foray into the WorldTour peloton since 2013. The brand, with over 60 years of history, will be featured on the Lidl-Trek jersey, on the socks, and on the iconic bottles that many fans already consider collector's items by the roadside.

PepsiCo Europe emphasizes that the goal is the same that has guided Gatorade since its inception: to help athletes, from grassroots sports to the WorldTour level, perform a little better through science-backed hydration. Through the GSSI, each cyclist will receive an exact recipe to avoid performance loss due to deficits in carbohydrates, fluids, or electrolytes during the toughest efforts.

For Lidl-Trek, this partnership aligns with its strategy to exploit any detail that can translate into measurable improvement. Personalized hydration is thus incorporated at the same level as aerodynamics, biomechanics, or race nutrition, with the aim of adding that extra one percent that so often decides a classic or a mountain stage.