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1. The recovery of power output and muscle metabolites was examined following maximal sprint cycling exercise. Fourteen male subjects performed two 30 s cycle ergometer sprints separated by 1.5, 3 and 6 min of recovery, on three separate occasions. On a fourth occasion eight of the subjects performed only one 30 s sprint and muscle biopsies were obtained during recovery. 2. At the end of the 30 s sprint phosphocreatine (PCr) and ATP contents were 19.7 +/‐ 1.2 and 70.5 +/‐ 6.5% of the resting values (rest), respectively, while muscle lactate was 119.0 +/‐ 4.6 mmol (kg dry wt)‐1 and muscle pH was 6.72 +/‐ 0.06. During recovery, PCr increased rapidly to 65.0 +/‐ 2.8% of rest after 1.5 min, but reached only 85.5 +/‐ 3.5% of rest after 6 min of recovery. At the same time ATP and muscle pH remained low (19.5 +/‐ 0.9 mmol (kg dry wt)‐1 and 6.79 +/‐ 0.02, respectively). Modelling of the individual PCr resynthesis …