A research piece recently published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine described “extraordinary levels” of ice used at the summer Olympics as not always being evidence-based and bad for the planet.
They report that over the last decade, there has been a sharp increase in CWI requests. Data provided courtesy from games organizers indicate that the request for CWI at Athens 2004 and London 2012 were 10% in comparison with Rio 2016 at 44%, where the majority of these were used for recovery. Tokyo 2020 Olympic games required 22 tons of ice and had an additional 42 tons delivered to the Olympic village residence for ice dispensing machines. Paris 2024 first estimated 1624 tons of ice, at a cost of €2.5million, however, the estimate was reduced to 650 tons (450 tons for the Olympics and 200 tons for the Paralympics). The researchers point out the environmental concerns as ice provision requires a considerable amount of energy for production and storage as well as logistical challenges related to transportation. In addition, 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.”
Cryotherapy (also known as cold therapy) is utilized as a physical intervention in the treatment of injury and exercise recovery. This may vary from ice packs, compression pumps, ice baths, ice towels, ice massage and cold water immersion. Traditionally, ice is used in the treatment of musculoskeletal injury to reduce pain while cold water immersion (CWI)is used to reduce muscle soreness for recovery from exercise.
( Kwiecien SY, et al. Eur J Appl Physiol. 2021 Aug;121(8):2125-2142.)
Postexercise CWI is one of the most widely used recovery strategies among athletes and pooled data analysis show that it is better for muscle power and perception of recovery than active recovery, massage or contrast baths. However, recent studies have reported that cooling decreases long-term strength adaptations (Roberts et al. J Physiol 2015;593:4285–301) and may impair acute performance following exercise (Solsona et al. J Sports Sci 2023;41:1126–35). The researchers suggest therefore given the financial, logistical and environmental implications involved in setting up a CWI area at a competition venue , the approach of organizers should rather be tailored towards recovery goals in order to reduce ice requirements. They advise that CWI may be recommended and appropriate for recovery following exercise in the heat for fast relief of heat exhaustion, prolonged exercise in normal temperatures for relief of muscle soreness and during multi day training conditions where muscle soreness is anticipated over several days. They also suggest that CWI may be ineffective or unsuitable for recovery when used for high intensity consecutive exercise, acute recovery following resistance training and long term recovery following resistance training.
They conclude that ice should remain available for the relief of acute pain, specific recovery needs and management of heat stroke and organizers should plan better for the provision of ice to minimize the use of non-evidence-based practices and promote better sustainability. The sport and exercise medicine community needs better data on the actual amount of ice consumed at major sporting events, for what purposes and at what financial and environmental costs.
Interesting read!
Melissa Martin
