NASAL STRIPS
Why Do Athletes Wear Nasal Strips? The Science, the Sport, and the Names Behind It
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If you watch enough sports, you have seen it. A tennis player walks out for a match with a small strip across his nose. A cyclist climbs a mountain stage with a bright pink band on his face. A footballer scores a goal and you notice something taped to the bridge of his nose. You have probably wondered why.
The full story is more interesting than a one line answer, so let me walk you through it, sport by sport, athlete by athlete.
Athletes wear nasal strips to widen the nasal valve, the narrowest point in the nose, so more air moves in and out with less effort. It is the same mechanism used for snoring at night, applied to breathing hard under load. It does not add oxygen or turn anyone into a faster athlete. It just makes a hard-working nose feel a little less like the bottleneck.
01. How a Nasal Strip Actually Works
A nasal strip is a small, flexible band with sticky adhesive on one side. You place it across the widest part of your nose, right where your nostrils flare out. The band wants to spring back to its flat shape, and as it does, it gently pulls your nostrils open from the outside.
That opens the nasal valve, the narrowest point inside your nose. Even a small increase in that space makes a real difference in how much air gets through, and controlled studies have shown a correctly placed strip can improve airflow by up to 21%.
How much more air can move through the nose with a strip placed correctly across the nasal flare.
Controlled clinical studies, reported by the American Rhinologic SocietyWe have written a full guide on how this works, with real research on strip placement and why it matters so much. You can read the complete breakdown here: Nasal Strips 101: Why Most Fail in India and What We Built Differently. This article is about the athletes. That one is about the science and the product.
02. What the Research Actually Says
We want to be honest here, because a lot of nasal strip marketing overpromises.
A nasal strip is not a performance enhancing drug. It will not turn anyone into a faster runner or a stronger fighter. What the research shows is smaller than that, but still real. Studies on nasal dilator strips and sports have found they can reduce the effort it takes to breathe through the nose during exercise. One study published on PubMed looked at nasal strips during sports activity and found a real, measurable drop in nasal airflow resistance.
Think of it like this. If breathing through your nose feels like sipping through a slightly bent straw, a nasal strip straightens that straw a little. It does not give you more lung capacity. It just makes the path the air travels through a bit easier. That is a small thing, but for an athlete pushing hard for two hours, small things matter.
03. Athletes Who Wear Nasal Strips
Awesome Sleep has no partnership with any athlete named below. We do not claim that they use our specific product. What we are sharing here is publicly documented: photos from matches, quotes from interviews, and reporting from real journalists. If you are one of the athletes named here, or you represent one, and you want anything changed or removed, please reach out to us directly.
Here is who we found, with real sources behind each name.
Tennis
Carlos Alcaraz has worn a nasal strip at several tournaments, including the 2025 Laver Cup and the Rotterdam Open. He was asked about it directly and said, "It's for my health. I have a slight cold and can breathe better this way." That is about as clear an answer as you will get from an athlete on this topic.
Casper Ruud has also been seen wearing one during matches.
Cycling
If you watch the Tour de France closely, you will spot more nasal strips than almost any other sport. Jonas Vingegaard wears a bright pink strip that is hard to miss on television, one of the most visible in the entire race. Victor Campenaerts has spoken about why he uses one, saying that nasal breathing under hard effort sends a signal to your body to relax, even when your legs are burning. Other riders like Mattias Skjelmose, Kevin Vauquelin, and Fred Wright have also been photographed wearing them during races.
Football
Santiago Gimenez, who plays for AC Milan, has a story that stuck with us. He told Radio NOS that he first started wearing a nasal strip because he was sick and had trouble breathing through his nose. His physio suggested it. He kept wearing it because it worked, and now he says it might also be a little bit of superstition. He wore it in his Serie A debut and in a Coppa Italia match against Roma in February 2025.
Football fans who remember the 1990s will also remember Robbie Fowler. During his time at Liverpool, he wore a nasal strip that became part of his look on the pitch.
American Football's Original Ambassador
No one is more connected to nasal strips in sports history than Jerry Rice. Back in the 1990s, Rice wearing a Breathe Right strip on the field is a big part of why nasal strips became something regular people started buying too. In 2023, his son Brenden Rice, a college wide receiver at the time, partnered with Breathe Right too. The brand called it "like father, like son," a reminder that this is not some new trend. It has been passed down in football for thirty years.
In 2014, the racehorse California Chrome wore a nasal strip through the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes, and officials approved it for the Belmont Stakes too. A study from UC Davis found the strips helped reduce lung bleeding in racehorses during hard runs. The science behind this is not only about people.
04. Does It Actually Help With Running?
Runners ask us about this more than almost anything else, so instead of just repeating research, our founder wore a nasal strip on one of his own long runs and pulled the real numbers afterward.
On August 1, he wore one for a long training run, just under two hours and fifty one minutes on the move, with heart rate tracked the entire way. Average heart rate for that run came out to 155 bpm, topping out at 187 bpm.
WHOOP strain score for the August 1 training run, out of a possible 21. Over 90 minutes of it sat in heart rate zone 4.
WHOOP training log, Awesome Sleep founder, August 1, 2026Heart rate and strain tell you how hard an effort was, not whether a nasal strip made it easier. This is one run, not a study. What we can say from how it actually felt is that nasal breathing stayed comfortable for almost the entire run, even once the effort climbed into zone 4 and stayed there for well over an hour. A nasal strip will not lower your heart rate or raise your fitness. It just makes the physical act of moving air through your nose a little easier while the rest of your body is working hard.
We go into more detail, with the full breakdown across more than one run, in this article: Do Nasal Strips Help With Running? What My Data Shows. If you are a runner deciding whether to try one, that is the article to read next.
Built for India's heat, wet air, and skin. The same strip athletes and our own team train in.
Try Awesome Nasal Strips05. Beyond Sport, What This Means for the Rest of Us
You do not need to be a professional athlete for any of this to matter. The same nasal valve that opens up for Alcaraz during a match is the same one in your nose right now.
If you are wondering whether a strip is safe to wear every single night, we answer that honestly here: Are Nasal Strips Safe to Use Every Night?
If you snore and want to know if a strip can help, read this: How to Use Nasal Strips for Snoring in India
If you are trying to decide between a nasal strip and mouth tape, a nasal strip and a nasal spray, or a strip and a dilator, we have written honest comparisons for all three: Nasal Strips vs Mouth Tape, Nasal Strips vs Nasal Spray, and Nasal Dilator vs Nasal Strips.
And if your strip keeps falling off, especially in Indian heat and humidity, that is worth reading too, because the same sweat that breaks down a strip during a workout is doing the same thing to your strip at night: Nasal Strip Keeps Falling Off? Here's Why
Takeaways
- Athletes wear nasal strips because breathing hard is a real part of their job, and anything that makes it a little easier is worth trying.
- A well placed strip opens the nasal valve and can improve airflow by up to 21%. It does not add oxygen or make anyone faster.
- Carlos Alcaraz, Jonas Vingegaard, Victor Campenaerts, Santiago Gimenez, Robbie Fowler, and Jerry Rice have all been connected to them, some in their own words.
- The science backs a small, real benefit, not a dramatic one, and no major sports body treats them as performance enhancing.
- None of these athletes endorse Awesome Sleep. We are sharing what is publicly documented because it shows this is not just a marketing gimmick.
FAQs
Not everyone named in this article is sourced the same way. Some, like Carlos Alcaraz or Santiago Gimenez, spoke about this themselves in an interview. Others are based on real photos from a game or race, without a quote explaining why. We have tried to be clear about which is which throughout the article, and we would rather tell you that honestly than make everything sound equally certain. We have not used any athlete photos in this piece, and we are not sponsored by, partnered with, or endorsed by any athlete, team, or league named here. If you spot anything that needs a correction, please write to us and we will fix it quickly.
This article is for informational and educational purposes only. Awesome Sleep nasal strips are CDSCO approved. This content is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease or medical condition. Consult a physician if you have or suspect a breathing or respiratory condition.