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Eliud Kipchoge and Sifan Hassan were among marathoners who donned a headband during their race at the Paris 2024 Olympics but what is the technology all about?
Kenyan marathoners Eliud Kipchoge and Hellen Obiri as well as Dutchwoman Sifan Hassan donned a headband during their races at the Paris Olympics which got curious fans searching for answers.
The three were donning a headband, made by Omius, a three-person company, whose CEO Jake Leschly was surprised by the huge statement of endorsement from the long-distance legends.
“They introduce Kipchoge and I’m like, ‘Son of a bi**h, he’s wearing it!’,” Leschly said in a recent interview with Outside.
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So, what is it and what is the science behind the headband?
The headband is a cooling technology that contains 20 cooling units, each of which consists of nine mini-towers of porous and heat-conducting graphite.
It increases the surface area of the relevant patch of your forehead by a factor of five. The cooling units can be swapped in and out.
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Omius seeks to increase the surface areas available for evaporation with the headband and as long as you keep the headband damp and have airflow going through it, water evaporates from the large surface area, hence drawing heat away from your forehead, which in turn creates a cooling effect.
“It obviously does not change your core temperature. Nothing changes your core temperature,” added Leschly who says it is the local effect that makes one feel cooler, which enables them to go faster, a trick that the marathon runners were seeking to benefit from at the Olympics.
More like the now famed supershoes for athletes, there is a belief that the slight decrease in heat due to the headband is pleasant and even performance-enhancing for athletes although how big the effect is cannot be quantified.
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The Omius headbands were first used in 2019 in triathlon before the COVID-19 pandemic saw it take a break after which sales resumed in 2022 and Leschly says 43 of the 53 pros at the 2023 Women’s Ironman World Championship wore them.
At the Paris Olympics, the athletes wearing them were not paid to do it but the company reaped the benefits thereafter as it sold half as many as they did in the whole of 2023. Currently each piece retails at $200 (Ksh25,732).
Still, the athletes needed their strength, power and tactics to be successful at the Olympics as Hassan won the women’s marathon with Obiri third but Kipchoge could not even finish his race, dropping out after 31km.
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Another marathoner who wore the headband is Ethiopia’s Bashir Abdi, who finished second behind his compatriot Tamirat Tola, as Kenya’s Benson Kipruto completed the podium.
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