Vision correction  

Prescription glasses may not always be the best option for athletes involved in contact sports or those requiring significant head movement, since they can become dislodged or fogged up. For children, the Prospecs sports eyewear range is perfect for basketball, soccer and cricket, coming in various sizes and with a strap or temples.  

Modern sports glasses are often lightweight and durable, sometimes made with titanium. Supra designs allow the sportsperson to look downwards and not have the frame in their field of view, which is perfect for golf and cycling. Oakley sunglasses and spectacles have a classic skull-grip temple, giving a three-point fit that lots of sportspeople love, especially cyclists.  

For prescription cycling glasses, ask the patient to assume an ‘on the hoods’ position (leaning forward, hands over the brakes and looking through the top of the lenses to get better aerodynamics) and you’ll see they look through a lot higher than a normal eye height position. Check your progressive height measurements so they can see their cycle computer.   
 

Contact lenses (CLs) are great for athletes. The benefits include full fields of view and peripheral vision, no raindrops on glasses or fogging up and the ability to wear plano sports-specific sunglasses.  

We are spoiled for choice with soft disposable CLs. One of my patients, a New Zealand orienteering champion, uses monovision contacts. His amount of astigmatism didn’t let us use a standard multifocal CL, so I trialled monovision as I wasn’t sure if compromised binocular vision would hamper his judgement of obstacles like tree roots and uneven ground. He loved them, can read maps, see the course and has had no accidents.  

 
Even a small prescription, like +0.25DS with -0.75 cyl, can really make a difference. One patient, a Northern Districts cricket player, loved having her minor prescription corrected for her bowling and batting. 

A naturally talented winger with the Warriors rugby league team came to see me for a sports vision assessment, feeling he had no problems with his vision. I found OU unaided vision of 6/9- with a prescription of -0.50DS and -0.75 cyl in both eyes; he had been prescribed glasses to play video games but was not given any advice or help to see better for his occupation. I fitted daily disposable CLs, which he loved and, unsurprisingly, said he now sees high balls at night under lights better. 
 

Ortho-k can be a great option for an athlete who experiences dryness from CLs or doesn’t want to wear disposables, but always consider the sport played. I dissuaded an elite international hockey player from going for ortho-k as he routinely played under lights at night and his vision would not have been as clear.  
 

Procedures such as LASIK have become increasingly popular among athletes. A very myopic Tiger Woods had photorefractive keratectomy early on in his career and later said he felt the hole on the green looked bigger. A top Warriors player with a mild amount of myopia couldn’t wear contacts and had a LASIK consultation. Due to the full-contact nature of the sport, the safest option was small incision lenticule extraction (SMILE), as there would be no flap. In the end he decided to play uncorrected but is still an amazing player.     

Vision protection  

High speeds, projectiles or physical contact in sports pose a risk of injury. Protective eyewear should be made from impact-resistant polycarbonate or Trivex. I don’t recommend wearing glass lenses for sport, even if they have passed a drop-ball test, as the risk can still be high if the lens is hit with enough force to shatter it.  
 

With smash speeds of over 100m/s among elite players, badminton is the fastest racquet sport, with a high potential for shuttlecock injuries. Squash, with a perfectly sized ball moving with high energy, can also cause devastating injuries to the eye. Unfortunately, although junior squash players have to wear protective eyewear, very few adult players do. Protective eyewear is also advised for pickleball, an increasingly popular modern-day version of padder tennis. 

David Ferrer at the ASB Classic in 2017. Credit: Jeremy Wong

Cyclists need polycarbonate lenses to protect them from stones flicked up by cars or trucks ahead of them. A sports sunglass with adjustable nose pads, like a Rudy Project Rydon, allows a frame to sit higher on the bridge, which will help reduce wind coming up and over the top of the sunglasses into the eyes. Mountain bikers should wear impact-resistant sunglasses to protect their eyes from branches when riding trails and downhill. Motocross riders often wear goggles with tear-away clear strips, so they can be quickly removed when mud and grit obscure the lens.   

For those hitting the wintry slopes, sunglasses or ski goggles are essential for skiing or snowboarding to reduce the risk of photokeratitis or snow blindness, which can be very painful. Mountaineers can get 90% tinted lenses to reduce the glare from the snow and ice at high altitudes, while side shields, like those on Vuarnet sunglasses, can help reduce dryness and glare. All sportspeople who spend significant time outdoors should protect their eyes from UV. Ideally, a wrap-around design will help avoid pterygia and pingueculae from peripheral corneal light scatter. A lot of golfers just wear a cap, but since grass reflects a lot of UV, sunglasses are also advised. 
 

In some sports, such as time-trial or triathlon cycling, helmets with dark or high-contrast tinted visors offer both protection and enhanced visibility. Motorcycle helmet visors help reduce wind reaching the eyes, reducing irritation and can make it more comfortable to see, depending on the tint of the visor. Although a cricket helmet’s main benefit is head protection, it also protects the eyes, since the ball cannot get through the metal grille.   

Ross Taylor avoiding a bouncer in the day-night test at Eden Park in 2018. Credit: Jeremy Wong

It should also go without saying that all shooters, be it of pistol or rifle, should wear some form of protective eyewear. 

Vision enhancement 

Beyond correction and protection, athletes often seek to enhance their vision to gain a competitive edge. Options include specialised eyewear and vision training.  
 

High-performance eyewear is designed to improve visual acuity, contrast sensitivity and depth perception. Oakley offers zero-distortion sunglass lenses for superior optics, with skull-grip temples, which can provide a comfortable and secure fit for a lot of sports. The company’s Prizm lens technology can give enhanced colour perception, which may help golfers, anglers and road cyclists. Especially popular among the many designs of sports sunglasses used by Tour de France competitors are one-piece wrap-around shields. However, these are hard to fit a prescription into unless lens cutouts are inserted or an adaptor is fitted behind the lenses. I have a pair of Oakley M frames with prescription lenses, which are very functional but can look very weird due to the cutouts. 
 

Tinted lenses enhance visual clarity, reduce glare and improve contrast. The choice of colour depends on the sport and environmental conditions, with yellow and amber tints popular in sports like skiing, shooting and cycling, enhancing contrast and depth perception in low-light conditions. Some drivers like a yellow tint to enhance night driving. Years ago, TAG Heuer designed a yellow-tinted sunglass lens with -0.25DS to enhance accommodation for the night driving portion of the 24 hours of Le Mans race.  
 

To improve light conditions, especially if mountain biking through forests or on a cloudy day, a high-contrast rose tint is often used. It’s also applied to ski goggles. Since grey tints give true colour perception and can reduce overall brightness without altering contrast, they are suited to bright, sunny conditions for running and cycling. 

To help enhance the contrast between the green of the grass or water and blue skies, brown and copper tints are commonly used in tennis, golf and fly fishing. Polarised lenses are essential for fly fishing to reduce reflections on the water to spot the trout.  
 

Green tints are sometimes used for similar reasons in golf, tennis and baseball, to make the ball stand out better against the grass.  
 

Different sporting requirements 

Understanding the visual demands of different disciplines is essential for selecting the appropriate vision correction, protection and enhancement. 
 

For golfers, the ability to accurately judge distances and read the green’s contours is imperative. I don’t recommend polarised lenses, as they make it harder to see the lay of the green when putting. Ideally, golfers should only wear distance vision glasses and not progressives, since altering their head position to look through the distance part of progressive glasses can affect how they address and strike the ball.  
 

Cricketers need sharp visual acuity and fast reaction times to track the ball's speed and trajectory. Protective eyewear is essential for close fielders and wicketkeepers. Interestingly, you’ll rarely see an international cricket player using sunglasses while batting. You would imagine sunglasses would make it comfortable when batting for long periods in bright sun, but one player said he doesn’t wear them because no professional players do so when batting. 
 

Distance runners need lightweight, comfortable eyewear providing UV protection and reducing glare. Photochromic lenses are beneficial for those who move between shaded areas and open sunlight. Triathletes require versatile eyewear that can perform well in various environments. Rudy Project sunglasses offer options such as adaptors and lens-direct-to-frames for patients who need a prescription to see. You can even use stick-on bifocals, just make sure you fit them a few millimetres below the lower lid.  

Swimmers can benefit hugely from prescription goggles which can be custom made or have generic plus or minus spherical lenses. UV blocking goggles with a dark tint can help ocean swimmers see the buoys and markers in a race and are also suited to indoor-pool swimming. For the cycling and running legs of a race, transition lenses are versatile as they can be clear when you ride or train early in the morning or late in the evening and are fully dark when in bright sun. 
 

Author Jeremy Wong’s nephew Max competing. Credit: Jeremy Wong

Athletes in track and field events need clear vision to maintain focus and timing. Lightweight, non-slip sunglasses with UV protection are ideal for outdoor events. For indoor events, athletes may opt for eyewear with minimal tint to reduce glare from artificial lighting. However, some Olympians appear to wear sunglasses purely to obscure their eyes and psych out other competitors! 
 

Skiers who tackle a lot of moguls won’t easily perceive undulations in the snow if they opt for a polarised lens. Similarly, glider, paraglider and hang-glider pilots need non-polarised sunglass lenses as they won’t see subtle differences in colours in clouds to catch the best thermals. Polarised lenses also give windshield flare, so are unsuitable for pilots.  
 

Yusuf Dikeç, the famously laidback Turkish Olympic shooter, has presbyopia, which compromised his shooting. Because he has to accurately see both the pistol sight and the target in the distance, an unusual solution of monovision glasses was successfully prescribed. This is in contrast to most other competitors who wear shooting-specific glasses with a pinhole lens and an occluder.  

Vision training  

Vision training is an increasingly important aspect of sports performance, especially for elite athletes. It involves exercises and drills designed to improve various aspects of vision, including hand-eye coordination, peripheral vision and reaction time. 
 

Eye-tracking exercises help athletes improve their ability to follow moving objects, with drills involving tracking fast-moving targets while maintaining focus and accuracy. For depth perception, vision training exercises may involve focusing on objects at varying distances. I find using a Brock String up to 3m long can help.  
 

For athletes competing in team sports, awareness of their surroundings without losing focus on the primary action is vital. Peripheral vision drills often include multitasking exercises that require athletes to react to stimuli in their side vision.  
 

Fast visual reaction time is crucial in sports like boxing, fencing and motorsports, where split-second decisions can determine the outcome. Hand-eye coordination speed can be improved with training devices and computer programmes involving the eyes tracking onscreen objects. 
 

Contrast sensitivity training helps athletes who compete in low-light conditions or against opponents wearing similar colours. Exercises may involve identifying patterns or shapes against different background colours and levels of brightness. 

Optometrist and photographer Jeremy Wong has been providing sports vision solutions to help athletes and weekend warriors perform better for over 30 years. His patients have included many Olympic and Commonwealth gold medallists, world champions and professional sports teams.

See more of Jeremy's Insta images @eyeguysphotos