Ben Scott works with British swimming stars Adam Peaty, Duncan Scott and Tom Dean
“We take a small blood sample, and it tells us the concentration of lactate in the blood that we’re measuring,” Scott told Olympics.com in a later interview, where he explained what is revealed after he puts the sample through a machine called a Biosen C-Line Analyzer.
Okay great, but what does that reveal?
“Lactate is the end product of glycolysis,” explained Scott of the science bit, “and that’s one of the ways that your body produces energy through the breakdown of carbohydrates in the body, and it’s the fastest way for your body to produce energy.”
So, measuring the lactate after a race essentially tells Scott how much energy an athlete can access through that metabolic pathway.
“So, when you’re just resting, everyone always has lactate in their blood, but it’s at very low levels,” said Scott, who works with British Olympic gold medallists such as Adam Peaty, Richards, and Tom Dean.
“So a reading for yourself or myself, just at rest, would be something like 0.5 to 1.0 – the unit is millimoles per litre,” explained Scott.
“So if I got you onto a bike and sprinted you as hard as you can possibly sprint, you could possibly get a lactate level of 20, which might be similar to what someone like a Matt Richards could get up to at the end of 100 freestyle,” said Scott, who works predominantly with Olympic swimming, but also Para swimming, artistic swimming, water polo, and diving.
“The difference between you and him is he will actually, in the muscle, be producing a lot more (energy), but he’s also been able to utilise and clear that at a much higher rate… He’s actually able to undergo a lot more glycolysis.”
So quicker processing and recovery for an athlete, vital when it comes to a sport in which multiple competitions come day after day, with the likes of Richards competing in five events, with heats, semi-finals and finals, across nine days at Paris 2024.
Scott might use this testing process for a number of applications, such as maximising training, warm-ups, and cool downs, but in this instance, we’re focusing on the reason the data he gains during competitions, like the national championships, is particularly useful.