On October 2, 1965, during a football game between the University of Florida Gators and the Louisiana State University Tigers, UF players test a newly concocted sports drink to help them regain the essential chemicals their bodies lose from profuse sweating. Developed in their own school’s science labs, the drink is designed to fight dehydration, rebalance their bodies’ electrolytes and restore blood sugar, potassium and body salts so they can continue to perform at a high level through their games. The Gators go on to win the match, after the heavily favored Tigers wilt in Florida's muggy, 102-degree heat.
The drink, nicknamed “Gatorade,” eventually becomes a mass-market phenomenon and makes its inventors wealthy.
Early in the summer of 1965, University of Florida assistant football coach Dewayne Douglas met a group of scientists on campus to determine why many of Florida's players were so negatively affected by heat. To replace bodily fluids lost during physical exertion, University of Florida’s Dr. James Robert Cade and his team of researchers—doctors H. James Free, Dana Shires and Alex de Quesada—created the now-ubiquitous sports drink.
“They developed a drink that contained salts and sugars that could be absorbed more quickly,” according to a University of Florida history of medicine, “and the basis for Gatorade was formed.”
In its early days, Gatorade wasn’t a hit with players. The drink reportedly tasted so awful that some athletes vomited after consuming it. Things got more palatable after Dr. Cade’s wife suggested adding lemon juice.
But it proved effective for rehydrating players and helped improved the team's performance; they became known as a second-half team that no longer sagged in the heat. The following season, the Gators posted a stellar 8-2 record, and the university released an official statement about the drink. A Florida newspaper headline summed up the gist: “One Lil’ Swig of That Kickapoo Juice and Biff, Bam, Sock—It’s Gators, 8-2.”
By 2015, royalties for the group that invented Gatorade had eclipsed $1 billion.
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