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Tim Baucom has done this before. The Milan Cortina Games will be his third Olympics as a wax technician for the United States’ cross-country ski team, a job characterized by long flights schlepping tools and duffel bags of gear halfway around the world, and even longer days prepping skis. His objective is to help American athletes gain even a fraction of a second in competition. But for the first time at an Olympics, he won’t have what was once one of the most powerful tools in his kit: fluorinated ski waxes. (Winters and Root, 2/10)

For most people, if not everyone, the pandemic days of masking are behind us. In certain corners of the Winter Olympics in Italy, though, things still look a lot like they did in COVID times. Some athletes are taking extreme measures to stay healthy. (Herz, 2/9)

Sarah Newberry Moore had long believed that motherhood would mark the end of her career sailing at the world championship level. A five-time national champion, she didn’t know of many women who had made it to the Olympics as mothers, even as many of her male peers competed at the highest level while raising children. (Gale, 2/6)

In other health and wellness news —

If you think your daily doses of espresso or Earl Grey sharpen your mind, you just might be right, new science suggests. A large new study provides evidence of cognitive benefits from coffee and tea — if it’s caffeinated and consumed in moderation: two to three cups of coffee or one to two cups of tea daily. People who drank that amount for decades had lower chances of developing dementia than people who drank little or no caffeine, the researchers reported. They followed 131,821 participants for up to 43 years.“ (Belluck, 2/9)

A large, long-term study found that playing a brain training video game may help protect the brain against dementia for decades. Experts say the findings are the strongest evidence yet that cognitive training can create lasting changes in the brain. “It’s very surprising,” said Marilyn Albert, director of the Johns Hopkins Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. “It’s not at all what I would have expected.” (Syal, 2/9)

The NFL is challenging innovators to improve the facemask on football helmets to reduce concussions in the game. The league announced on Friday at an innovation summit for the Super Bowl the next round in the HealthTECH Challenge series, a crowdsourced competition designed to accelerate the development of cutting-edge football helmets and new standards for player safety. The challenge invites inventors, engineers, startups, academic teams and established companies to improve the impact protection and design of football helmets through improvements to how facemasks absorb and reduce the effects of contact on the field. ( Dubow, 2/7)