BBC Sport reports on REDs, bone health and cycling results. A measured look at the findings and their relevance for endurance athletes over 35.
BBC Sport's report published on 20 October 2026 describes work by Dr Nicky Keay involving 50 male competitive cyclists. Initial screening raised concerns about bone health and relative energy deficiency in sport. The report also describes better bone-health and race outcomes among cyclists who received combined nutrition and training advice.
For ambitious athletes over 35, the useful question is how fuelling and training fit together. This is a story about supporting performance alongside health, not about setting a new weight target or stepping away from competition.
BBC Sport describes relative energy deficiency in sport, or REDs, as a condition arising when energy intake is insufficient for training demands and the body's other needs. Its report says men as well as women can be affected and that REDs may harm both health and performance.
According to BBC Sport, Keay's initial screening found poor bone health in nearly half of the 50 male competitive cyclists. It also found REDs in 25%. Both findings help explain why the report considers health and racing in the same discussion.
The reported experiment ran for six months. One group continued its existing training and fuelling habits. The other received nutrition and training advice from Keay.
Keay told BBC Sport that the group continuing its usual habits lost more bone mineral density. She also said their race results fell below what would be expected relative to their functional threshold power. By contrast, she said the advised group improved its bone health and had “really good race results.”
The pairing matters: the advice covered both nutrition and training. Reading the story only as a message to eat more would leave out part of the approach described. The useful performance question is whether the athlete's fuelling and workload are being considered together.
The wider BBC report also describes a change in emphasis at British Cycling. Its chief medical officer Nigel Jones said the organisation had shifted its messaging from weight and power-to-weight ratio toward the performance costs of under-fuelling. He described education and annual physical and psychological screening.
The cyclist findings reach us through BBC Sport's account and Keay's comments. The article does not identify a journal paper, DOI or independently accessible report for the experiment. That makes the account a reported comparison rather than a fully assessable published trial.
Several missing details affect interpretation:
These gaps prevent a firm conclusion that the advice caused the reported improvements or a calculation of the likely benefit. The screening percentages describe this particular group rather than cyclists generally. The riders' ages are also not reported, so the account does not establish an effect specifically in athletes aged 35 to 65.
The BBC story also provides no outcome data showing the effect of British Cycling's education and screening approach. Those measures are useful context for the discussion, not evidence that a particular screening schedule improves performance.
For endurance athletes over 35, the practical value lies in how the report frames the problem. Performance concerns deserve attention alongside health concerns. Reendure's position is that staying competitive and staying active for years belong in the same conversation.
The reported advice addressed fuelling and training together. That supports reviewing how the two fit rather than treating nutrition as an isolated task or assuming that more training is the answer to disappointing results. For riders maintaining a demanding schedule, the energy required by training is only part of the picture described in BBC Sport's explanation of REDs.
A useful discussion with a coach or health professional can therefore cover:
These are discussion points rather than a self-treatment plan. Our guide to fuelling for performance and long-term health offers a broader place to consider nutrition. The companion guide on planning training across the years keeps that conversation connected to workload and long-term participation.
Jones's comments suggest a constructive way to discuss fuelling: connect it to the ability to perform rather than making body weight the central scorecard. For a competitive rider, that changes the question from how light to become to how well the whole training approach supports health and racing.
That is a shift in emphasis rather than a demand to lower sporting ambition. Taking under-fuelling seriously is consistent with wanting better race results. Health is not an inconvenient subject to put aside until a training block ends.
Jonny Brownlee's account in the BBC report adds another perspective. He described inadequate fuelling education and a culture that treated on-bike fuelling as weakness. In his experience, those attitudes contributed to injuries and poor recovery as well as stress fractures and underperformance.
The practical lesson from his account concerns the language surrounding food and effort. A training culture can value commitment without presenting adequate fuelling as a lack of toughness. For athletes and coaches, discussing nutrition openly is a more useful response to this story than praising the ability to get through sessions with less food.
The BBC Sport video on male athletes affected by REDs provides a companion to the written report.
BBC Sport reports that signs of REDs in men can be less obvious and may go unrecognised. Persistent under-fuelling, unexplained performance decline or recurring bone-related problems are reasons to seek a conversation with an appropriately qualified health professional. They are not a basis for diagnosing yourself from the report.
That discussion can bring the training schedule and fuelling habits into the same assessment. The role of professional support is to address the individual's situation rather than apply a news story as a ready-made plan. For related background, our guide to nutrition and skeletal health keeps the longer-term goal in view.
BBC Sport's account puts bone health and race performance in the same frame. The strongest practical takeaway is to consider fuelling alongside training demands, especially when persistent concerns appear.
For athletes over 35, that means taking unexplained underperformance or recurring bone problems seriously without turning screening figures into a personal diagnosis. Keep the ambition. Bring nutrition and training into the same discussion and seek qualified support when concerns persist.
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