US Olympic artistic swimmers reveal how long it takes to do their hair before competition

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Louise Thomas

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After a 20-year stint of leaving the Olympics empty-handed, Team USA’s women’s artistic swimming team finally made it to the podium, winning silver in the three-night competition on August 7.

This year, the women’s team confidently performed an intricate routine to Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal” inside the arena at the Paris 2024 games. They finished just behind China and scored higher than Spain, showing strength under the tutelage of coach Andrea Fuentes, a four-time Olympic artistic swimmer.

While Team USA’s triumph marks a turning point in Olympic history for the hard-working athletes, viewers directed their attention to an important style detail: their hair. Female Olympic athletes have recently been taking to TikTok, revealing the process of taking out their hairdos after the competition.

Viewers have watched athletes peel back a seemingly solid layer of clear gelatin plastered over their entire heads on the app, prompting questions about the style.

On August 7, Yahoo Sports posted on its social media account to address the questions on everyone’s minds. “What do artistic swimmers put in their hair, and how do they get it out?” the on-screen caption read.

Team USA’s Daniella Ramirez said: “We put Knox gelatin on it, and Knox gelatin is basically what you use for Jello. It’s powder, and you put it with hot water.”

Back in February, Ramirez detailed her hair routine for competition on her personal TikTok page, explaining why artistic swimmers put gelatin over their hair.

“It’s to keep the hair in place while we swim and it’s purely for aesthetic reasons,” she said.

According to Ramirez’s teammate Megumi Field, the process of getting ready can be extensive depending on the athlete’s experience. “So the hair takes originally like 2.5 hours, but over the years it gets to a point where it’s only 40 minutes,” she said.

“The Knox is not as hard as it looks, it’s literally just hot water,” Ramirez noted. “You don’t have to use shampoo if you don’t want to. It’s just standing under boiling hot water that dissolves, and just scalding your head.”

Field said it’s best to start picking at the gelatin and peeling it back before running your head under hot water because sometimes it can be difficult to break.

In Ramirez’s opinion, the “most painful part” of taking out the gelatin is the ponytail section. “The bobby pins that go in, sometimes you put one in and there’s like 60 or 70 bobby pins in at one time,” she said.

“If you have one, and you don’t know where it is, and it’s bothering you all day, you’re like trying to find which one hurts, and now you have a headache,” she continued. “And you’re like, ‘Please, make it stop.’”

Some TikTok users admitted they’ve tried putting Knox gelatin in their hair, and the removal process isn’t as easy as the athletes made it seem.

“I used to spike my hair with Knox gelatin. It’s difficult to remove, that’s for sure. My hair would be spiked up for a week,” one experienced individual commented.

One shocked viewer confessed: “I have an extremely sensitive scalp. I’d have never made it.”

“My fine hair is screaming at this. I can’t believe they do this to their hair,” another woman agreed.

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