Adidas builds suit for Winter Olympics that heats up athletes from the inside

Adidas has built a special suit for the Winter Olympics that warms up its athletes from the inside.

From the outside, the Climawarm System looks like a normal tracksuit. But on the inside are a series of heating pads, aimed specifically at important muscles, that are intended to ensure that athletes stay at the right temperature after they complete their warm-ups.

Adidas has been working on similar systems for years. At the London Olympics in 2012, it introduced similar tools for track cyclists to “achieve optimal muscle temperature for power expression”, says Margherita Raccuglia, director of athlete performance at Adidas.

But it has now built a new version of the suit specifically for the Winter Olympics, allowing its athletes to cope with the specific challenges posed by chasing world-best performance in sub-zero conditions. Those heat pads are specifically focused on the muscles that need to stay warm, and it comes with a range of additional features such as “boost” mode in times that it is particularly needed.

The system has been built in collaboration with those athletes, says Raccuglia. “We have data supporting what kind of temperature we need to provide from a physiological point of view, but it was important to also gather their perceptual feedback as well,” she says, in a process that took about a year and a half.

The conditions at the Winter Olympics are almost perfectly calibrated to make such technology difficult: batteries perform badly in the cold, and electronics struggle in the wet. Adidas also built a series of safety mechanisms, to ensure that it did not overheat, and a special charging bag to make sure that it is always ready to go.

But athletes were “never worried” about the safety of the suit, she said. Instead, their concerns were primarily about performance – whether they would be able to get out of it quickly and easily enough to undertake their discipline, for instance, and testing including coaches timing athletes taking it off to make sure.

At the moment, the suit is only available to those professional athletes at the Winter Olympics. But “this is a technology we want to further explore for more and more athletes and consumers,” says Raccuglia – “staying warm in cold environment is something that resonates with lots of our consumers”.

Adidas has also worked on similar technology for cooling. That has included building a jacket that has something like an in-built air conditioning system, including fans that eject air and create a cooler microclimate around its wearer, that has been used by athletes including the Mercedes Formula 1 team.

Away from that work, Raccuglia says that the other “pillar for performance” is movement, and the company is working on new technologies that support athletes as their muscles work. That might include clothing that is able to support the muscles and joints as they work, especially through fatigue – though that work, for now, is remaining largely secret.