Does Hairstyle or Clothing Give Olympic Competitors an Edge?

While world-class elite athletes depend on skill and extreme determination at the Olympic level, researchers are discovering that science can also be an influential factor.

For example, simulation software developed by Ansys, the Southpointe, UK-based company, has been put to use by British researchers to figure out whether what may seem like inconsequential personal preferences for hairstyle or clothing might add or subtract even just milliseconds from a sprint or trim centimeters off a jump distance.

The researchers using the Ansys software at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland, and KU Leuven University in Leuven, Belgium, have been exploring aerodynamics of 20 types of clothing styles and 10 various hairstyles of female athletes in the long jump and 100-meter dash to see how it would impact performance.

Their findings? As reported by Observer-Reporter.com, If a female athlete participating in the long jump has long, curly hair, combined with loose-fitting clothing, such factors can trim up to 10 centimeters off the jump distance, and may be a deciding factor in whether they end up with a medal.

“There’s a surprising misconception that persists up to the present day among some athletes and their coaches that aerodynamic resistance would not be significant in track and field events,” says Bert Blocken, a professor of aerodynamics at Heriot-Watt University. In a news release from the university, he notes that athletes and coaches in other sports, such as cycling, skiing and speed skating, have already inputted hair and clothing into their calculations on performance, while track and field athletes and coaches have not.

Blocken added that “this opinion is fundamentally wrong and that hairstyle and clothing can cause significant drag in long jump and 100-meter sprint events. In both events, the impact on performance is enough to lose out on a gold medal.”'

To carry out their studies, Blocken and his fellow researchers put plastic, life-sized mannequins in a wind tunnel, and, using the Ansys simulation software, tried various pairings of clothing and hairstyles. They also used 28 various postures for the long jump.

The results showed for example that long, curly hair can increase drag by 8.7% in both 100-meter sprint and long jump competitions. The study also found that drag goes up by 23% for female athletes wearing loose-fitting shorts and tops.

Male athletes were not part of the study.

Blocken explained that “even for top athletes, hair caps have almost never been used before in the long jump and 100 meters and that athletic clothing is not systematically tested in wind tunnels. This would certainly reduce the athlete’s aerodynamic resistance and level the playing field for them.”

Future research will examine the impact of various types of socks and shoes.

“Sporting victories are determined by increasingly small margins, and using simulation to improve factors including aerodynamics can provide the competitive advantage to deliver a winning performance,” says Thierry Marchal, the chief technologist for health care and sport in Ansys in Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.

More Ansys Coverage