Watching the Winter Olympics through an athletes’ eyes

With the Winter Olympics in full swing, viewers have had the chance to marvel at the artistic beauty of ice dance, watch in awe at the speed and control of luge and skeleton athletes, and cheer on the precision and accuracy on display in curling. The range of sports on show is broad and, for many, far less familiar than those typically seen at the Summer Games. 

Beyond the obvious physical and technical demands, each of these sports places very specific demands on the athlete’s visual system. And at the highest level of performance, how effectively an athlete uses their vision can be the difference between delivering under pressure and falling short at a critical moment.

Training the eyes of an Olympian 

As someone who has worked with Winter Olympians from a range of disciplines, I am particularly interested in how these visual demands differ between sports — and how they can be trained. Much like strength, speed, or endurance, the visual system has the capacity to adapt and become more efficient. However, for visual training to have meaningful impact, it must reflect the actual demands of the sport. 

What eye tracking reveals about visual behavior

When considering physical performance, we can often observe and measure what is required — how fast an athlete needs to move, how much power they must generate, or how much force they need to absorb. Visual demands are far less obvious. This is where eye tracking technology can provide valuable insight into how athletes use their vision during performance. 

For example, eye tracking a figure skater reveals the importance of smooth eye movements while gliding around the rink. However, during jumps and spins, a very different visual behavior emerges. Here, the skater needs to stabilize their gaze on a fixed point and then return to that focal location as quickly as possible once the body movement forces the eyes to shift. This ability to regain visual stability is critical for balance, orientation, and control. 

In contrast, ice hockey places heavy demands on visual information processing. Players must constantly monitor the puck, teammates, opponents, their own position relative to the goal, and the unfolding pattern of play — all within a rapidly changing environment. This requires fast saccadic eye movements combined with effective peripheral awareness. Peripheral vision is particularly important here, as it is well suited to detecting motion and guiding attention when multiple events are occurring simultaneously. 

Wearable eye trackers like Tobii Pro Glasses 3 give athletes the unique ability to understand their visual strategies directly within the flow of their sport, capturing how they read the environment, react under pressure, and make moment‑to‑moment decisions in real‑world conditions. Meanwhile, screen‑based systems such as
Tobii Pro Spectrum complement this by offering a controlled space to hone specific visual skills. With a wide range of test paradigms and targeted training mechanisms, athletes can refine essential capabilities like focus, gaze stability, and precision decision‑making. Together, these tools create a powerful ecosystem for both understanding and improving visual performance.

How precision sports rely on the quiet eye 

Interestingly, several Winter Olympic sports share more visual similarities than might initially be expected. Bobsleigh, curling, and downhill skiing can all be thought of as aiming tasks. In curling, the athlete aims to slide the stone towards the house. In downhill skiing, the skier is effectively aiming their body towards the next gate. In bobsleigh, the pilot is aiming the sled along the fastest possible line down the track. 

Experts in these sports are likely to demonstrate a visual behavior known as the ‘quiet eye’ — a period of steady gaze on a task-relevant location immediately before or during movement. In relatively self-paced sports such as curling, this quiet eye is typically directed at the target and maintained until the stone is released. In time-pressured environments like downhill skiing or bobsleigh, these stable gazes are shorter and must occur earlier. A skier, for example, may hold their gaze steady on an upcoming gate until the moment their body must commit to the turn, at which point the eyes should shift rapidly to the next reference point. 

Holding the eyes steady while the body is moving at high speed is no small challenge. It places significant demands on visual-motor coordination and the ability to maintain visual stability under dynamic conditions. 

Visual power behind world‑class performance 

As the Games draw to a close, it may be worth watching the athletes not only for their physical, technical, and artistic excellence, but also for the visual demands they are managing — and overcoming — in order to perform at the highest level. Vision may be less visible than strength or speed, but it plays a crucial role in how effectively athletes interact with their environment, particularly in the visually complex and demanding conditions of winter sport.