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GB unvails Olympic kit: Might the wrong colours have been chosen?

Wearers of red team uniforms or kits have been shown to do better than those wearing other colours (Attrill et al, 2008). When sport means so much and outcome is often decided in millimetres or thousandths of a second, we should be doing all we can to help our athletes achieve. I think that the GB Olympic designers may have missed an opportunity here to include more red in the design (it is mainly blue). If it were more red, this may have helped give the GB wearers a boost psychologically that would be reflected in physical performance  - for instance, if the red increased confidence, (positive) aggression and sense that they are dominant, then they are likely to perform closer to their peak performance potential. In addition, there may be negative affects on opponents, facing our athletes wearing significant amounts of red, where they assume a less confident and more submissive position in the sporting contests. While these affects are likely to be small, when it comes to the Olympics, the margins between gold and silver, medal and non-medal, are small, but the difference in reward is huge.

Outside the Olympics, Tiger Woods for years has worn red on the last day of his tournaments, and we all know how dominant he was. Was this something he learned from research, from observation or from his own experience?

Dr Victor Thompson
www.sportspsychologist.com
(This comment was given to the Guardian newspapers on 22 March 2012)

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