Collegiate Cross-Country Champions Use Olive Oil to Fight the Cold

Olive oil may have played a piv­otal role at the 2024 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I cross-coun­try cham­pi­onships in Verona, Wisconsin.

Alongside his col­leagues, two-time Olympian and Brigham Young University (BYU) coach Edward Eyestone applied olive oil to his ath­letes’ arms, backs and legs after they removed their pre-race warm-up clothes and were prepar­ing to race.

Eyestone believes olive oil can make a dif­fer­ence when race time tem­per­a­tures hover above freez­ing. His con­vic­tions were repaid as the BYU men’s and women’s cross-coun­try teams were crowned cham­pi­ons.

While using olive oil this way is not new for the coach, he said it is reserved for spe­cial occa­sions. ​“We only break the olive oil out for the big races at the end of the year,” he told Olive Oil Times.

“In the States, the big races usu­ally coin­cide with late fall when the con­di­tions are get­ting more extreme. And my guys usu­ally run well late in the sea­son,” Eyestone said.

The coach believes olive oil may enhance ath­letes’ per­for­mance in var­i­ous con­di­tions. ​“I have only done this before cross-coun­try races, but there’s no rea­son why it wouldn’t work for a 5k [five-kilo­me­ter] or 10k [ten-kilo­me­ter] race,” Eyeston said.

“For any­thing much longer than 30 min­utes, I’d be con­cerned that the olive oil would grad­u­ally cool to the out­side tem­per­a­ture,” he added. ​“In such cases, I’d prob­a­bly opt for more tra­di­tional options like tights, arm sleeves, or longer shirts. And, of course, in extreme con­di­tions, wear mul­ti­ple lay­ers.”

The asso­ci­a­tion of the olive tree with sports has a long-stand­ing tra­di­tion, dat­ing back to the Olympic Games in Ancient Greece.

“Before ath­letic prac­tice, the ath­letes would anoint their bod­ies with olive oil to pre­pare their skin,” Anna Gustafsson, a Finnish archae­ol­o­gist and writer based in Athens, told Olive Oil Times in an August 2024 inter­view. ​“They also cleaned them­selves after sweat­ing by rub­bing their skin with a mix­ture of olive oil and sand and then scrap­ing the dirt off.”

In mod­ern times, ath­letes par­tic­i­pat­ing in Turkey’s annual Kırkpınar olive oil wrestling tour­na­ment use an esti­mated two met­ric tons of olive oil.

Combatants rit­u­al­is­ti­cally cover them­selves and their oppo­nents in olive oil, which makes it very dif­fi­cult for the wrestlers to grip each other, forc­ing them to grab their oppo­nen­t’s pock­ets. Wrestlers also claim that olive oil reduces pain from injuries and helps their wounds heal faster.

“Olive oil use is very old school,” Eyestone said. ​“When I was a high school run­ner in the late 1970s, I first used it.”

“I believe I can trace it back to either my father, who used it at the University of Idaho while run­ning cross-coun­try in the 1940s, or my high school coach, who used it with our team,” he added. ​“Since he was from Canada, he knew a thing or two about cold con­di­tions.”

Various lubri­cat­ing fats have been used on the skin as a pro­tec­tive layer in mod­ern times.

“I think swim­mers cross­ing the English Channel have tried sim­i­lar meth­ods by coat­ing them­selves with Vaseline or lard,” Eyestone said.

“Cross-coun­try skiers in very cold con­di­tions are also known to use Vaseline on exposed skin. Olive oil is just a thin­ner ver­sion of the Vaseline tech­nique,” he added.

Olive oil con­tains numer­ous com­po­nents, includ­ing antiox­i­dants and vit­a­mins, that are ideal for skin care. Thanks to its polyphe­nols, olive oil can also help the skin recover from dam­age.

Still, the coach admit­ted that the exact mech­a­nism by which olive oil ben­e­fits BYU run­ners remains unclear.

“One of my ath­letes is a mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing major, and his pro­fes­sor, upon hear­ing about our use of olive oil, sug­gested it was prob­a­bly mar­gin­ally use­ful due to heat trans­fer­ence prin­ci­ples,” Eyestone said.

“The thin layer of olive oil pro­vides some insu­la­tion against heat loss from the warm skin to the cold air,” he added. ​“Thanks to the vis­cos­ity of the olive oil, a thin layer of air may also be trapped between the skin and the oil.”

Eyestone explained that the coach­ing staff warms the olive oil slightly using heaters, ​“which cre­ates a cozy, blan­ket-like sen­sa­tion when first applied,” he said.

“Ultimately, I feel that the olive oil helps bridge the gap between remov­ing outer warm-up cloth­ing and the warmth the body gen­er­ates dur­ing the race,” Eyestone added. ​“And instead of need­ing to remove arm sleeves or an extra shirt dur­ing the race, you’re already free of those lay­ers and can focus on run­ning.”

As a long-time user of olive oil in races, Eyestone reflected on how it has helped him in some of the harsh­est con­di­tions he has encoun­tered. ​“I’ve used olive oil in tem­per­a­tures rang­ing from the high 30s to as low as 5 ºF (-15 ºC),” he said.

• New York Times
• NCAA