Olympians Embrace Pasta at the Winter Games in Italy

At the Winter Games in Italy, athletes are leaning on pasta as performance fuel. More than a thousand years ago, Italians developed a taste for dried wheat noodles introduced by Arab traders and over centuries turned them into the globally beloved food known simply as pasta.

Pasta remains omnipresent in sports even as nutrition science evolves. “I’m a pasta girl, so I’m hyped,” said Mystique Ro, 31, an American skeleton racer. Elisabetta Salvadori, the head of food and beverage for the Italian Olympic organizing committee, said a whopping 600 kilograms of pasta will be served each day across the three cafeterias in the athletes’ villages.

The International Olympic Committee unveiled a bespoke pasta shape modeled after the Olympic rings; the I.O.C. says the pasta is a “limited-edition product not available for sale.” Carbo-loading took hold after Swedish scientists in the 1960s showed the efficacy of carbohydrates as a fuel source, and athletes began to favor pasta for training and competition.

Italy

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