JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - Dr. J. Robert Cade, who invented the sportsdrink Gatorade and launched a multibillion-dollar industry that thebeverage continues to dominate, died Tuesday of kidney failure. Hewas 80.
His death was announced by the University of Florida, where heand other researchers created Gatorade in 1965 to help the school'sfootball players replace carbohydrates and electrolytes lost throughsweat while playing in swamp-like heat.
'Today with his passing, the University of Florida lost a legend,lost one of its best friends and lost a creative genius,' said Dr.Edward Block, chairman of the department of medicine in the Collegeof Medicine. 'Losing any one of those is huge. When you lose allthree in one person, it's something you cannot recoup.'
Now sold in 80 countries in dozens of flavors, Gatorade was bornthanks to a question from former Gators coach Dwayne Douglas, Cadesaid in a 2005 interview.
He asked, 'Doctor, why don't football players wee-wee after agame?'
'That question changed our lives,' Cade said.
Cade's researchers determined a football player could lose asmuch as 18 pounds - 90 to 95 percent of it water - during the threehours it takes to play a game. Players sweated away sodium andchloride and lost plasma volume and blood volume.
Using their research, and about $43 in supplies, they concocted abrew for players to drink while playing football. The first batchwas not exactly a hit.
'It sort of tasted like toilet bowl cleaner,' said Dana Shires,one of the researchers.
'I guzzled it, and I vomited,' Cade said.
The researchers added some sugar and some lemon juice to improvethe taste. It was first tested on freshmen because coach Ray Gravesdidn't want to hurt the varsity team. Eventually, however, the useof the sports beverage spread to the Gators, who became known as a'second-half team' by outlasting opponents.
After the Gators beat Georgia Tech 27-12 in the Orange Bowl in1967, Tech coach Bobby Dodd said his team lost because, 'We didn'thave Gatorade ... that made the difference.'
Stokely-Van Camp obtained the licensing rights for Gatorade andbegan marketing it as the 'beverage of champions.'
PepsiCo Inc. now owns the brand, which has brought the universitymore than $150 million in royalties since 1973.
Cade said Stokely-Van Camp hated the name 'Gatorade,' believingit was too parochial, but stuck with it after tests showed consumersliked the name.
Cade said he thought the use of Gatorade would be limited tosports teams.
'I never thought about the commercial market,' he said. 'Thefinancial success of this stuff really surprised us.'
The formula has changed very little over the years. An artificialsweetener replaced sugar.
