Tokyo Olympics 2020: Indian women’s hockey team’s secret ingredient to combat Tokyo heat was gherkin-in-vinegar pickle

Tokyo: When the Indian women’s hockey team travelled to Tokyo for what turned out to be a generation-defining Olympic campaign, one of the strangest, but critical, supplements that the team’s scientific adviser, Wayne Lombard, packed was pickles — in this case, gherkin in vinegar. Enough to make around 100 shots of them, in fact, to help the Indian women’s team players with cramping in the hot and sweltering conditions of Japan.

Pickle juice is known to help with recovery between games. The women’s team played their eighth match on Friday in a 13-day period, with most of the high-intensity matches being played under the glare of the scorching sun and heavy humidity.

India finished fourth, losing to Argentina in the semis and England in the bronze medal playoffs.

“We give players shots of pickle juice before the games. Just pickle juice…gherkin in vinegar. Literally, just raw pickles, nothing fancy. I don’t know how they came about trying it, but someone randomly tried it, there was a lot of research on it and it seems to work,” revealed Lombard, who has been with the women’s hockey team since 2017. “You have shots of it. There are two ways of taking it, you have shots and drink it or you can gargle it so your membranes get it and then you spit it out.”

He added that the first time he used it was when one player suffered from cramps during the Argentina tour at the start of the year. He had read a fair bit about it, so he decided to try it out. It worked. Now the players drink it after breakfast, depending on when the game is.

“So, we use pickle juice for cramps in case there’s lactic acid (build up),” he added, pointing out that there’s been a lot of research about the use of pickle juice. “Membranes respond to it and sends signals to brain to release muscles so they don’t have tension. So we use pickles so they don’t cramp. that seems to have worked with the women’s players,” he said.

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