copper weights to combat germ spread for calgary olympians
'it's huge, especially leading into a competition. if you become ill or sick, mentally and physically you become drained'
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high-performance athletes training in the team canada winter sports training facility may not notice a subtle change recently made to their calgary gym. but canadian olympic and paralympic sport institute officials are hopeful that outfitting the canada olympic park facility with copper can make a marked difference for athletes by helping to prevent the spread of germs in the weight room.
high-touch surfaces in the gym such as dumbbell handles and exercise equipment are now coated with antimicrobial copper, a metal touch surface that kills 99.9 per cent of bacteria.
preventing infection is vital for athletes training at a high level, said team canada ski cross olympian jared schmidt.
“it’s huge, especially leading into a competition. if you become ill or sick, mentally and physically you become drained. you’re stressed, you have to worry about competing at the best of your ability while sick,” schmidt said.
“we’re training so hard and it takes awhile for our bodies to recover and push to our maximum.”
change about peace of mind
there’s no noticeable difference in feel between the copper-coated weights and those previously used, schmidt said, making for an easy adjustment.
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the change is about peace of mind for trainers and athletes, said jeremiah barnert, sport and development lead for the canadian sport institute, who added any advantage can make a significant difference at the highest levels of performance.
“we’re able to fight for one per cent all the time, and when we can not have to worry about equipment safety and cleanliness, it can help take a lot of stress away from athletes,” barnert said.
“depending on your sport, it can be thousandths of a second, it can be within centimetres or inches.”
hannah schmidt and jared schmidt train at winsport in calgary on wednesday, july 19, 2023.
heather chapin
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copper equipment could become wider spread
the addition comes from a partnership between the sports institute and teck resources, with the company investing $200,000 to outfit training facilities with copper — $100,000 in calgary, and $100,000 in the summer facilities in toronto.
bringing copper to the team canada gyms is a trial run for potentially rolling out that equipment more broadly, said teck spokeswoman catherine adair.
“(we’re) really building these demonstration projects where we can prove the effectiveness as well as prove things like maintenance and durability, all the things that a facility would want to know before it invests heavily in this product,” she said.
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“i would love to see this in the gym that i train at, but team canada got it first.”
twitter: @jasonfherring
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