A pre-race cup of coffee is as much part of the keen exercisers ergogenic arsenal as a bottle of sports drink these days. But does caffeine really enhance sports performance, or is it all something of a storm in a, er, coffee cup?
The jury is still out — but there have been some very interesting findings since caffeine’s performance-enhancing effect was first discovered in the 1970s. In a series of caffeine-related studies conducted at Ball State University, cycle time to exhaustion increased by 19.5 per cent following caffeine intake. A whole batch of studies followed this initial experiment — with mixed results.