why are olympic athletes wearing tape on their faces?

it's not just to cheer on their home country.

by maija kappler

published feb 15, 2022

3 minute read

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3 minute read

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why olympics athletes are wearing tape on their faces

american biathlon athlete sean doherty at the 4x6km relay on feb 5 in zhangjiakou, china. (david ramos / getty images)

if you’ve been watching this year’s olympics, you may have noticed something strange about the athletes, beyond their wild talents and sometimes excruciatingly difficult physical feats. many competitors, from a wide variety of countries and across different sports, are wearing tape on their faces. fashion statement? skincare trend? another way to cheer on their country? the tape is kinesiology tape, and it’s most commonly applied to muscles, either after injury or pre-emptively to vulnerable places on the body, reducing pain and swelling and improving both circulation and flexibility. some physical therapists think it can actually re-route the information the body sends to the brain about pain, according to healthline.

it’s cold out there

but the wearing of tape during the olympics has nothing to do with pain. rather, it’s a strategy to protect against the cold. the temperatures of the areas of beijing where the olympics are taking place have been dipping down to about -16 degrees, frigid cold sometimes made worse by the high winds that blow snow around. to put that in context, the coach of the austrian women’s biathlon team told nbc news that games are canceled or postponed if temperatures are below -20 degrees before windchill.

beijing temperatures are considerably colder than most previous winter olympics, particularly the vancouver games in 2010 and the sochi, russia olympics in 2014. the last winter olympics though, in pyeongchang, south korea in 2018, were fairly cold, too. the face tape trend was actually traced back to those games: during downhill training in 2018, american skier ted ligety wore tape emblazoned with “u.s.a.” on his cheeks and nose, the new york times reported.

the cold ‘makes your body go stiff’

genting snow park in zhangjiakou, the area northwest of beijing where the skiing and snowboarding events take place, is “one of the coldest places i’ve ever been on earth,” american skier aaron blunck told the la times. “it makes your body get stiff.” blunck, a colorado native, isn’t exactly new to cold weather.

estonian biathlete johanna talihärm told nbc that her lips froze during her individual race. but that wasn’t as bad as what happened to another athlete from her country.

“my cross-country teammate froze his finger in the skiathlon so that it’s still a little swollen and doesn’t have quite all the feeling back yet,” talihärm told the outlet. “it was his trigger finger, but luckily he is not a biathlete.”

the snow in zhangjiakou is almost all man-made, as water in the region is scarce. but in an olympic first, there was a real snowfall this weekend in the region.

kristina reztsova of russian, anna magnusson of sweden and anais bescond of france in action. (hannah mckay / reuters)

in addition to face tape, there are a number of things athletes are doing to keep warm. many have added extra layers like heated socks, hand warmers and neck gaiters, according to the la times. zinc products can help protect the face, as can dermatone and vaseline, often applied on athletes’ cheeks, noses and lips.

warm-ups help, too: you want to minimize the time you’re exposed to the cold and not moving, skiier jaelin kauf said. “just rub around to keep the muscles warm or just do a little running in place or jumps,” she said. “little things like that, just to keep everything from stiffening up.”

the president of kt tape, the brand many athletes are using, said it hasn’t actually been clinically tested on the face, so its efficacy isn’t confirmed. it also could be hard to remove.

“kt tape doesn’t endorse the use of kinesiology tape on the face as it isn’t clinically tested, and the adhesive that works so well to keep tape in place” may be hard to remove “from the delicate skin on the face,” greg venner of kt tape told usa today.

“we’ve seen kt tape used as protection against the wind in winter sports over the years, so although it isn’t a clinically approved usage, we appreciate the ingenuity.”