Artistic swimmers competing at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games shared the secret to performing in the water while maintaining an impeccable hairstyle. The female athletes, who have taken to social media to reveal the process of beautifying their performances, shared a common secret ingredient: Knox gelatin.
The official TikTok page for Yahoo Sports posted a video on Wednesday (August 7) to address the following questions: “What do artistic swimmers put in their hair, and how do they get it out?”
Highlights
- Artistic swimmers use Knox gelatin to maintain hairstyles during performances.
- Knox gelatin is unflavored and versatile, made from collagen found in animal tissues.
- Megumi Field reduced her hair routine time from 2.5 hours to 40 minutes.
- The hair routine includes using boiling hot water to dissolve gelatin.
- Team USA won their first Olympic artistic swimming medal in 20 years at the Paris 2024 Games.
In the viral video, which amassed nearly 600,00 views, Team USA’s Daniella Ramirez explained: “We put Knox gelatin on [our hair], and Knox gelatin is basically what you use for Jello. It’s powder, and you put it with hot water.”
If you have ever simmered meat bones for a soup and then chilled it, you may have noticed a slight jellied effect to the broth.
Artistic swimmers competing at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games shared how they maintain an impeccable hairstyle in the water
Image credits: annadramirez
This result is due to "collagen," a protein substance that yields gelatin and is found in the bones, skin, and connective tissue of animals, Knox Gelatine explains.
In manufacturing, unflavoured gelatin is extracted from the collagen in hot water, and it is then concentrated and filtered for purity and clarity. It is cooled, extruded, and dried into glassy brittle strips.
The Knox brand explains that unflavoured gelatin has no flavor on its own and contains no sugar. This makes unflavoured gelatin extremely versatile: it can be used to create desserts, salads, main dishes, jams and jellies, and even ice cream and frozen yogurt.
Image credits: annadramirez
“Originally, it took me like two and a half hours,” Team USA's Megumi Field revealed. “But over the years, it gets to a point where it's, like, only 40 minutes.”
Daniella further revealed: “Now taking off the Knox is not as hard as it looks. It's literally just hot water.
“You don't even have to use shampoo if you don't want to. It's just standing under boiling hot water until it dissolves and just scalding your head.”
The female athletes, who have taken to social media to reveal the process of beautifying their performances, use Knox gelatin
Image credits: annadramirez
Megumi added: “You know, start to scrub it out as much as possible cause once it dries, it's really on there.”
“The most painful part is like the ponytail and like the head,” Daniella said. “The bobby pins that go in cause sometimes, you put one in and there's like 60, 70 bobby pins in your head at the same time.”
The 22-year-old continued: “If you have one and you don't know where it is, bothering you all day, you're like digging, and you're like trying to find which one you put in that hurts.
"And now, you have a headache, and you're like, 'Oh, please make it stop.'"
The clip gathered sympathy from viewers, as a TikTok user commented: “Someone will invent a clear cap and will make millions!!!”
A person wrote: “My first girlfriend was a synchronized swimmer(yes, I'm that old). She used to hate the hair care routine.”
The official TikTok page for Yahoo Sports posted a video on Wednesday (August 7) to address questions about the hairstyle
Someone noted: “I used to spike up my hair with Knox gelatin, it's difficult to remove that's for sure my hair would be spiked up for a week.”
“My fine hair is screaming at this,” a netizen agreed. “I can’t believe they do this to their hair.”
A separate individual chimed in: “I have an extremely sensitive scalp. I’d have never made it. Respect!”
Image credits: annadramirez
Back in February, Daniella explained in a video shared on her TikTok page: “[Knox is] to keep the hair in place while we swim, and it’s purely for aesthetic reasons.”
“We could use swim caps, and we do at practice, but it looks better to swim this way to fit a theme,” the Indiana native added.
Korean-American artistic swimmer Audrey Kwon was flung into the air from a pool with her seven fellow teammates at an Olympic Games, helping Team USA clinch a silver medal on Wednesday.
China took gold in the artistic swimming team event, the US won silver, and Spain took the bronze medal
The win marked the first Olympic artistic swimming medal for the United States in 20 years, the Olympics official website reported on Thursday (August 8).
Team USA’s journey to the 2024 Paris Olympic Games reportedly defied the odds in more ways than just choosing an athlete with acrophobia to perform acrobatic moves.
They had a team member faint and almost drown in the pool, missed qualification to Paris 2024 by less than a point at the 2023 Pan American Games, took a chance on a 44-year-old male swimmer to help them get those quotas, and ultimately qualified a team to the Olympics for the first time since 2008, as per the Olympics official website.
Image credits: annadramirez
After a turbulent 20-year period in which the once-dominant Team USA continued to miss the podium in artistic swimming, it was only fitting that Wednesday's acrobatic routine, which would decide the final rankings in the team event at Paris 2024, revolved around the themes of sorcery and miracles, the Olympics official website explained.
"It was magic," team coach Andrea Fuentes told the Olympics' official website. "It has been a dream of a system that we have created."
Team Great Britain’s Kate Shortman candidly opened up about the painful process of making artistic swimming routines look flawless.
The US silver win marked the first Olympic artistic swimming medal for the country in 20 years
“Because it’s so glamorous, we’ve got our costumes on, it’s a distraction from the fact that this is a really, really hard sport.”
She added: “We’re supposed to be smiling so you can’t see the pain. The smile is fake.”
Image credits: annadramirez
Artistic swimming training encompasses 40 hours a week or more of gymnastics, yoga, gym work, video analysis, and even apnea training, The Sun reported.
The magic of the sport was particularly upheld in an incredible display of artistry this week, as the People’s Republic of China came out on top of the team competition to clinch the Olympic gold for the very first time, getting an incredible final score of 996.1389, the Olympics official website reported on Wednesday.
The gold medal team stunned the pool at the Aquatics Centre in Paris on all three days of competition, posting the highest score for the technical, free, and acrobatic routine for a combined total that landed them on top of the podium.
Korean-American artistic swimmer Audrey Kwon was flung into the air from a pool with her seven fellow teammates
Image credits: annadramirez
Nevertheless, it is Team Spain, the bronze medalists, who reportedly got the biggest reaction from the crowd outside of host Team France, as their music was representative of every single athlete at these Games, with Eminem’s iconic Lose Yourself pulsing throughout the stadium, the Olympics official website reported.
The next artistic swimming events will be the duet technical routine, on Friday (August 9) at 7:30 pm CET, and the duet free routine, on Saturday (August 10) at 7:30 pm CET.
Paris is currently preparing for the 2024 Olympics closing ceremony. It will take place on Sunday (August 11) between 9 pm and 11:15 pm CET, and it is being held at the Stade de France.
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