best sport wash/detergent?

this may not bode well with others, but I have a plastic dish pan in my shower, and after EVERY workout I pour in a good amount of laundry detergent and hot water.  Squish those workout clothes clean and rinse. Hang dry. NO STINK !!

The trick is FRAGRANCE FREE !  This causes the stink (besides your own stink).

Two triathlete household living in a townhouse, so there's not much choice but to load up hampers during the week with the funk.  We just use Tide "Febreze Sport" detergent.  Nothing fancy.  Works fine...no accumulating stank.

And we do use one dryer sheet per load of delicates...which includes our tech fabric stuff...people say not to use those for tech garments, but we've been doing it for years now with no evident effect on the fabrics.

We use Penguin Sport wash. On really stinky loads (hehe!), I add about a cup of white vinegar and about 10 squirts of Febreeze. Hang to dry. NEVER put in the dryer. That just magnifies the stink.

x2 on the Penguin Sport wash.  It gets out all the stink.  Even the stink of workout clothes that have been wadded up in a bag for a week!

jami  

This is my routine with all of my workout clothes. I don't know which steps are essential and which are optional, but I do them all pretty much every time.

a) Wash with homemade laundry soap made with grated soap, borax, and washing soda. I often mix a few drops of tea tree oil into this mixture (or use a tea tree soap to make the detergent).

b) Put white vinegar in the fabric softener dispenser, about 1/2 cup per load.

c) Hang to dry.

Doing this, I don't really have a problem with stank.

x3, this stuff really works.  Wife and I both have lots of workout clothes that really stank up the house.  We tried several different brands of sport washes then someone on here recommended the Tide Sport.  Stuff is awesome.  We actually use about half of the detergent the bottle recommends b/c the febreze smell was too strong.  But even at half strength it gets all the stank out.

I use Penguinwash but it honestly doesn't permanently remove stink from those clothes that are heavily used and have already acquired them. (Shoes being a great example of that unremovable odor.)

The single best thing you can do to avoid this problem:

1. Rinse heavily used apparel immediately after use to get most of the live bacteria off. The bacteria (from your skin and sweat) are the cause of the odor, and after enough use, they'll form a microfilm that either allows them to survive a lot longer than they should, and/or grow much more rapidly even after they're removed. This accounts for most 'stench.' I do this in my shower, and hang it on a small hook in the shower until it stops dripping.

2. Air dry your rinsed apparel, immediately. The prolonged wetness allow the bacteria to really get revved up and exponentially dividing. Never throw wet clothes into a pile for laundry several days later. At least hang it somewhere so it can mostly air dry. I just hang my clothes on the side of the laundry basket. 

These two moves will accomplish far more than any special detergent. In my first year of marathon training, it seemed that all my clothes were getting 'stanked out' after a year of heavy use. Since adopting this method, I'm still wearing technical clothes 5+ years old with heavy use, problem free. 

Unfortunately, once the stank settles in, it's extremely difficult to get out. Yes, the sports washes do remove it, but as you probably know, the odor returns quite rapidly, often immediately due to that microfilm of bacterial debris left on there.

One thing also is to make sure that you are not leaving the clean clothes in the washer too long before transferring to the dryer or hanging to dry.  Especially in hot places like we have here in North Texas, clean clothes get very moldy and funky smelling pretty soon after washing.

I try to get to them right away and hang up or put in the dryer.

I don't have any issues with sweat odor, but sunscreen smell seems to stick on my clothes. Any tips for that specifically?

I can't/don't use anything with fragrances, much too sensitive of skin and nose.
My mom washed a pair of my bike shorts in her Tide last week and the next TWO TIMES I wore them (with myself washing in between rides) I could STILL smell the Tide. That stuff is strong. And not in a good way to my nose.  

x4

My wife and I toss our used sports clothers in the linin closet to separate them from other laundry.

It doesn't smell, maybe beacuse our 5 cats with 2 litterboxes in the room smell worse?

Maybe because I sweat so much at night that my wife calls my bed half the "stinky side"

Who knows...

My wife does the laundry in the house, and has plenty of experience with lycra and spandex etc from years of dance and drill and cycling and running and swimming from a family of five.

Below is her advice to keep athletic clothes in great shape with no stink.  Our clothes last many years, and many things have been resurrected from the dead (oops, I left in this in the trunk of my car for the last month type stuff).

• It doesn't much matter if they air dry or stay damp, but if they stay damp and warm (trunk of your car) then bacteria multiply and they stink more. 
• Rinsing immediately after exercising is not needed, although rinsing swimsuits after swimming helps them last longer.  Lycra swimsuits don't like chlorine; rinsing helps but use polyester instead.
• The most important part of washing athletic clothes is lots of water and a minimal amount of detergent.  A little bit, especially HE detergent, goes a long way.  Our washer has an "athletic" cycle which uses more water for a given size setting than normal, and has three rinses.   You have to get the detergent out or it gives a place for bacteria to cling. Technical type cloths like Dry-Fit wick water etc and that makes it difficult to rinse them. 
• Never use fabric softener.  Technical clothes are not cotton and the chemicals in softeners destroy the fibers of technical clothes.  Same for bleach.
• Never dry in a dryer.  Hang dry or use a drying cabinet.  Heat is the enemy of technical clothes; there is no faster way to ruin it then a dryer.  It may look fine coming out, but there has been damage done and you will measure their lifespan in months instead of years.
• The special detergents are OK, but we've used Arm & Hammer liquid for years. Unscented - some of the scents cause problems for technical clothes (again, they're not cotton.
• Use cold water.  Warm shouldn't be used. 

To get the current stink out, rinse in a large Rubbermaid type bin, about 3 times the size of the clothes.  Fill with plenty of cold water (way more water than clothes) and dump in an entire small box of baking soda.  Stir well, then stir in your clothes.  Let it sit 24 hours with the top open.  Then run through a cycle in the washer with no detergent.  Then wash again normally, with detergent.