Tuesday, July 29, 2008 – Metro.co.uk
It was more like jolly smoggy sticks for the British Olympic women’s hockey team.
They have been forced into wearing futuristic red contact lenses to protect their eyes from the Beijing’s pollution.
Goalkeeper Beth Storry and her team-mates had suffered from the hazy conditions at their training camp on the island of Macau, near Hong Kong.
Smog is seen by the human eye as a red colour, and the red lenses work by forcing the eye to filter out red light from the colour spectrum – thus presenting clearer vision.
“They’re like sunglasses but as a contact lens so it just prevents glare,” skipper Kate Walsh explained.
“Both the goalkeepers like to wear them and a couple of the girls do on a really bright day so you’re not squinting a lot, which can cause headaches.”
“They make them look like the devil,” head coach Danny Kerry joked.
“They are high contrast but they also allow you to track the ball and one of the theories is that if you’re squinting all the time, it actually fatigues your muscles quite heavily.
“The girls that have persevered with them swear by them.”
Last week Beijing ordered more than a million of the nation’s 3.3 million cars from the roads and closed dozens of factories in a desperate attempt to slash air pollution levels.
There are now fears the games could be overshadowed, almost literally, by the terrible weather conditions.