People overthink the salt thing. Seriously, unless you're doing really long events (4hr+) or really hot out and you're out for hours, drinking water to thirst is the best bet. For multiday events, you can get your salt in whatever form you want - tabs, drinks, even food.

Look up the studies by Tim Noakes - seems about every year he puts a bunch of S. African military guys who are pretty fit, through some 5-6 hour crazy workout where they sweat like hogs the entire time in a 95-105F environment and he gives them no salt (but ample water), and they ALWAYS do fine. No dropoff in performance, and no deranged electrolytes on blood draws after all that exercise.

I think more likely is people like the idea that marketers put out there that electrolytes are suddenly going to make you ride faster/longer/better, where in 99% of cases, it's not true - it's all about the training.