The luckiest colours to wear at the Olympics

• Blue is the luckiest colour, worn by over four in 10 gold medallists.
• White and yellow are the second-luckiest colours, worn by almost one in five.
• The unluckiest colors are black, orange, and green, with the lowest win rate at one in 50.

New research reveals that blue is the luckiest colour to wear at the Olympics to increase competitors’ chances of winning a gold medal.

The research conducted by men’s fashion retailer boohooMAN analysed every kit worn by each gold medal winner in athletics, football, basketball, volleyball, and tennis during the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. Researchers used Google Images to identify the dominant colours of the kits. Each colour was ranked based on the percentage of appearances on a gold medallist’s outfit at the time of winning.

The luckiest colours to wear at the Olympics

The research revealed that competitors who wore blue clothing had a much higher chance of winning. Blue was the dominant colour for almost half (44 percent) of the gold medallists, including athletes from the Czech Republic, France, India, Greece, and Italy.

Athletes wearing white and yellow had a one-in-five (18 percent) chance of winning gold. Gold medallists who claimed the top prize in white include the United States basketball team, Alexander Zverev, who won the men’s singles tennis gold, and Poland’s athletics team. Yellow was worn by Olympic champions including Brazil’s football squad, Germany’s women’s long jump champion Malaika Mihambo, and Sweden’s Armand Duplantis, pole vault world record holder.

Olympians wearing red had a gold medal win rate of 13 percent, a difference of 31 percent compared to blue. Red-hued winners include Switzerland’s and Croatia’s Tennis Women’s Singles and Men’s Doubles champions Belinda Bencic, Nikola Mektić and Mate Pavić.

Black, orange, and green are deemed the ‘unluckiest’ colours, representing only two percent each.

A spokesperson for boohooMAN commented on the findings:

“It turns out that not just skill can influence your chance of success in sports. The colour you wear might be a secret weapon. 

Red is usually thought of as a colour that leads to success because it projects confidence, aggression, and dominance. But our study shows that blue, a colour associated with calmness, focus, and concentration could give an Olympic athlete the biggest competitive edge.

In fact, we found blue kits were worn by almost half of the gold medallists, which is a huge difference from any other. It came as a total surprise, considering that red is generally seen as having a psychological effect that signals danger and aggression.

Small advantages matter in competitive sports, and it turns out blue could be the perfect colour to wear to boost the chances of Olympic success.”