Paris Olympics 2024: Japanese teams to wear infrared-proof uniforms to fight camera voyeurism

Japan’s volleyball, track and field, table tennis, and other teams will wear uniforms made of a cutting-edge new fabric that absorbs infrared light, preventing infrared cameras from seeing through to athletes’ underwear or bodies underneath, Le Monde first reported.

Japanese sports equipment company Mizuno designed the outfits specifically to combat the rising trend of voyeurs producing and circulating compromising photos of athletes on pornographic websites, Mizuno said in a press release.

Kazuya Tajima, who works on Mizuno’s development team, told Le Monde he hopes that the “use of this fabric by top athletes will make society aware that voyeurism is unacceptable,” adding that “cameras are becomingly increasingly sophisticated.”

The fabric uses specialised material that absorbs light from the infrared range into the composition of the textile itself, making the fabric “nearly wholly opaque” under both visible and infrared light, Mizuno explains. And that, Mizuno says, “can help reduce the number of athletes that fall victim to illicit infrared photography.”