Partnership between SRFC and Nahibu

Stade Rennais Football Club has partnered with Nahibu to optimize the performance and health of its players.

2020 is a historic year for SRFC, with the club qualifying for the first time ever for the Champions League, the most prestigious European competition. Aware that the state of the gut microbiota has an impact on health as well as physical performance, Dr. Boumpoutou, team doctor for Stade Rennais Football Club, wanted his players to benefit from the nutritional analysis and advice offered by Nahibu, the French leader in microbiota analysis.

The Rennes-based start-up, which has surrounded itself with the best specialists in order to create a tool in 2019 that allows as many people as possible to highlight the functional potential of their gut microbiota, will support the team in this unprecedented sporting adventure for the club by providing it with its solution.

Optimizing collective performance through tailor-made nutrition.

This collaboration will make it possible to monitor changes in the players' gut flora and provide ways to optimize their health, well-being, and therefore their performance thanks to the personalized nutrition solution offered by the Breton company.

The goal is to obtain objective data that will enable us to understand what is happening and monitor the progress of what we are implementing. For example, we will prescribe probiotics to the players, which aim to nourish the intestinal microbiota to make it more efficient. As winter approaches, we know that the immune system can be weakened, so we will try to prevent that, says Dr. Boumpoutou.

This is a world first in professional soccer.

This partnership between SRFC and Nahibu also fuels the ambition to advance research on the links between nutrition, gut microbiota, and athletic performance.

It's a real opportunity to be able to support such a team of athletes and to have the chance to observe the effects of high-level sport on the microbiota, but also the influence of the microbiota on performance, preparation, endurance, and recovery, says Emmanuelle Lecommandeur, R&D Nutrition Project Manager at Nahibu.