Even the bladder is banned now but I doubt they’ll be watching 2000 age groupers!
I did use special needs at Cali and Nice, didn’t take too long but if you’re going for a time and are borderline then it might tip the balance.
I did mention the lack of carbs on another thread.
In the olden days a lot of people had a bottle full of zipvit gels which were very concentrated with just a bit of water to dilute it.
PH actually do a pre-mixed carb gel for your bottle, so it’s not like they don’t acknowledge it’s a problem.
High5 also do a gel refill bottle which is the equivalent of 13 gels.
Which I’ve never understood the point of decanting gels, especially people who diluted them.
You pay a premium to have it in gel form for convenience, and then turn that into an expensive version of sugar and water (or even just premixed sport products).
I think it was more carb counting tbh, and zipvit were particularly gloopy so did need a little bit of water 
This was about 15 years ago as well and aero drink bottles or frame embedded nutrition was a long way off it was the bottle between tri bars with Velcro
Drinks like Maurten etc changed things and nutrition is fairly personal. I always liked powerbar stuff but a lot of people hated it