Possible Disadvantages In All Black Sports Clothing

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29998, 6 December 1962, Page 26

Possible Disadvantages In All Black Sports Clothing

Does New Zealand put its sports teams under a handicap by dressing them in “all black”? Would athletes perform better without singlets? When these questions were put to several persons knowledgeable in such matters, they mostly thought “all white” preferable to “all black," though they were not generally inclined to think singlets a handicap. They all said, however, that experiments would be necessary before a useful answer could be given to either question. It is a fact of physical science—as was confirmed by a telephone call to the Physics Department of the University of Canterbury—that a black object is both a better radiator and better absorber of heat than a white one of similar construction. A sportsman wearing black will therefore tend to get hotter in hot weather and colder in cold weather than someone in white. What is not known is the likely temperature difference in various circumstances, and at what stage, if any, the difference would become significant in terms of comfort and of sports performances.

The question of wearing or not wearing singlets apparently hinges on two, effects—air drag, which is presumably greater on the material of a singlet than on bare perspiration dampened skin, and singlet weight. The director of the School of Physical Education at the University of Otago (Associate Professor P. A. Smithells) said experimental evidence was essential to answering either question. With regard to the “all black” proposition, the most satisfactory procedure would be to start with a body completely clothed in black and compare the skin temperature in these conditions with the skin temperatures as other parts were progressively bared. “I wouldn’t hazard a guess as to the result,” he said. He had not heard of any experiments along these lines. Professor Smithells doubted whether the advantage gained to a foot-race by running without a singlet would be sufficient to improve times measurably. The extra power needed to dip a tenth of a second off the 220yds, for example, was large—probably much more than that needed to carry a

singlet and overcome its airdrag. Moreover, it could be that extra weight was an advantage once an athlete was under way, as it helped increase his momentum. A Christchurch doctor who is himself an athlete pointed out that the ancient Greeks ran naked and greased themselves, both measures apparently being aimed at increasing speed. (Professor Smithells questioned that the grease was intended primarily to increase speed; the idea, he said, was to make it easier to scrape sand off the body after the race.) The doctor thought it quite possible that a marked improvement in comfort and performance might be achieved by discarding black to favour of a lighter colour. It was “amazing" no-one to have experimented along these lines, he said. Now that tiny transistor transmitters were available to send out continuous information about temperatures taken by the morocouples placed next to the skin, experimentation would be relatively simple. He did not think any great

improvement was likely from discarding the singlet, as is weight would be much less than that of the food most athletes would have inside them when they ran. Test* would be necessary to prove this, however.

Another doctor, who had a special interest to skin diseases. also said that black clothing could be a marked disadvantage, especially, he thought, m warm climates like those of Western Australia or South Africa. In any case, it was important that the clothing be made of a cotton of good absorbent grade. Woollen garments were especially to be avoided next the skin, as wool wr.s a bad absorber of perspiration and tended to cause heat congestion.