You are here

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Editorial
Ice challenge in recent summer olympic games
  1. Sebastien Racinais1,2,
  2. Mohammed Ihsan3,
  3. Marie-Elaine Grant4,
  4. Valentin Dablainville2,5,
  5. Yohan Rousse1,
  6. Wolfgang Schobersberger6,
  7. Richard Budgett7,
  8. Lars Engebretsen8
  1. 1 CREPS Montpellier Font-Romeu, Environmental Stress Unit, Montpellier University, Montpellier, Occitanie, France
  2. 2 DMEM, UMR 866 INRAE / University of Montpellier, Montpellier, France
  3. 3 Aspetar Orthopaedic and Sports Medicine Hospital, Doha, Qatar
  4. 4 University College Dublin, Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
  5. 5 Research and Scientific Support, Aspetar Orthopaedic and Sports Medicine Hospital, Doha, Ad Dawhah, Qatar
  6. 6 AT, Mumbai, India
  7. 7 CH, Lausanne, Switzerland
  8. 8 Medical and Scientific Department, CH, Lausanne, Switzerland
  1. Correspondence to Dr Sebastien Racinais; sebastien.racinais{at}creps-montpellier.sports.gouv.fr

https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2024-108664

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    From injury and illness management to recovery, cryotherapy is commonly used by athletes and their support personnel.1 And the simplest version of this remains the application of ice. However, the use of ice is not trivial, nor should it be taken for granted. Apart from logistical challenges related to production, transportation and storage, ice is often used to obtain benefits which are not evidence-based. More importantly, ice could have the opposite effect to that expected such as delayed tissue regeneration or impaired recovery.2 This editorial discusses recent trends in ice usage and resource requirements at the Olympic Games within the context of an uncertain evidence base for the clinical application of cryotherapy.

    The rising use of ice consumption at major events

    While mobilisation, massage and ultrasound were their principal treatment modalities, the British Olympic Association reported using ice in 10% of their treatments during the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games and 8% of their treatment during their preparatory camp in Tallahassee.3 Comprehensive retrospective analyses of the London 2012,4 Rio 20165 and Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games (data courtesy of the Games organisers) also showed that while manual therapies are the most common intervention used by physiotherapists at the polyclinic, cryotherapy ice packs and compression pumps were the fourth most common intervention accounting for 4% to 7% of the total encounters. Similarly, the polyclinic of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games delivered 585 manual therapy treatments and only 63 cryotherapy ice …

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • X @ephysiol, @Ihsan_mo

    • Contributors SR drafted the editorial. MI performed the review and the figure on cold water immersion. MEG provided the analyses from previous Olympics. All authors reviewed and amended the draft. All authors approved the final submission. SR is the guarantor.

    • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.