At the Olympic Village, cuts, styles and manicures are free, but the benefits, the athletes say, are priceless. Photo: The New York Times
They are one of the most popular teams at the Olympics. Their hand-eye coordination is off the charts. Their uniforms? Head-to-toe black and tres chic.
They are the hairstylists of the Summer Games, at the service of any Olympian in the athletes’ village in need of grooming and on a mission to substantiate that old sports mantra: look good, feel good, play good.
“I’m not going out there looking scrappy,” Aphiwe Dimba, 23, a goalkeeper for South Africa’s field hockey team, said as she settled into a stylist’s chair last week.
“It gives me more confidence after I get a cut. You never know who is taking your picture.”
If the Olympic Village cafeteria is a space for spontaneous social interaction, its serene salon in the main plaza is a refuge of self-care: kicking back, primping and optimising one’s aura before it’s time to compete.
The hair salon, a fixture at every Olympics, has been open this summer from 9am to 9pm each day.
On one recent morning, a race walker from Britain was having his hair trimmed, a boxer from Uzbekistan was getting her long blond hair braided and a BMX racer from Colombia was having her nails painted in the colours of her national flag.
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Some days, there are up to 10 hairdressers arrayed in the space, all of them from top salons around France and equipped to help replicate an authentic beauty parlour and barbershop.
The only difference is the price: For Olympians, the haircuts are free.
“It’s a moment for them to relax and forget the competition,” said Darygue Cordinier, who stepped away from Chopperhead, his barbershop in Paris, to work this month at the Olympics. “We’re here to take care of them.”
But looking good, according to athletes, is not purely a superficial pursuit.
Zigmars Raimo, a three-on-three basketball player from Latvia, said good grooming was essentially mandated by the team’s coach as a means of optimising performance.
“He’s always saying, ‘If you look good, you play good,'” said Raimo, who stopped by one morning a few hours before a game to have his beard cleaned up.
“In the morning, for practice, you can’t come with messy hair or a fully grown beard. It means you’re not ready to play if you’re not taking care of yourself.”
Kristi Wagner, an American rower, said the ritual of having her hair washed and styled was “a form of meditation” – one that was all too rare when she is on the road as a top athlete and all the more necessary in an environment as daunting as the Olympics.
Nigina Uktamova, a boxer from Uzbekistan, takes a video during her hairstyling at the salon in the Olympic Village. Photo: The New York Times
And Daina Moorehouse, a boxer from Ireland who had her nails done at the salon, said it just made sense for her to look her best during what she would probably consider one of the peaks of her professional life.
“I like fighting in style,” said Moorehouse, who laughed as she acknowledged that her nails would be hidden inside her gloves.
“Before I even got here, I got my lashes done, my hair done, my eyebrows done. It’s the biggest thing in my life, so why not? I got my teeth whitened.”
Laureen Menez, a nail and makeup artist from Paris, said she was enjoying the opportunity to meet so many athletes from around the world and hear about their lives (“They’re all so cute!”).
She was building a large collection of team pins given to her by athletes while working up to 12 nail appointments a day.
At the same time, the stylists said they were unfazed by the high-intensity environment of the Games, the possibility that their handiwork would be viewed by millions of people on television or the famous athletes walking through the doors.
“We’re used to working with many stars, so it’s easy to be professional,” said Sabrina Derkaoui, a stylist at the Raphael Perrier salon in Paris, who maneuvered around her chair in a black blazer and billowy cargo pants.
“I don’t know who these athletes are.”
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A spokesperson for the salon said Wednesday afternoon (Aug 7) that athletes from 145 countries had stopped by since the start of the Games for more than 800 total services.
Many athletes said having a haircut was part of their competition routine. But some said they were concerned, at first, that the French hairdressers might have trouble with their kind of hair or their stylistic requests.
Nyl Yakura, a Canadian badminton player of Asian descent, considered it a “little bit of a risk” to put his hair in the hands of an unfamiliar barber far away from home. And Dimba said her team had gone to tournaments in countries such as India and China where hairdressers were unsure of how to deal with her tight curls.
“It was quite stressful,” said Dimba, who ended up bringing a pair of clippers to the Olympics just in case she could not find a person to properly cut her locks.
But Yakura, Dimba and most other athletes walked away from the salon more than satisfied. They felt spruced up. They had looked after themselves. They were ready to compete.
And the Olympians, without realising it, had already made the stylists’ jobs easier
“It’s not difficult, because all athletes have the same style: Just make a fade on the side,” Cordinier said, laughing. “It’s the same haircut. It’s easy.” – The New York Times
