Do you feel sleepy?

(Photo:Reuters)

- or do just cool down your brain without knowing?

I don't feel particularly sleepy 10-15 min before a race. At track meets I see many yawning athletes right before the gun goes off.

I yawn like an old and tired dog on my warm up. Sometimes I don't even realize I'm doing it. It's just like I can't help it. And I AM NOT sleepy!

I read this article in Dagbladet today about the American short track speed skater Apolo Anton Ohno, who has won seven Olympic medals in his career. He always  yawns during warm-up. The article also says that he does it to inhale as much fresh O2 as possible. You can read the article in English here. 


Searching for information on athletes and yawning, I found this:
- Yawning is a process that protects our brain from overheating and serves as an alert signal to others.
Andrew C. Gallup and Gordon G. Gallup, Jr., researchers from University at Albany studied yawning in college students to find out the reason of yawning. They disproved the theory that yawning results from the lack of oxygen. As experiments showed, the alterations in oxygen and carbon dioxide levels in the blood didn't affect the yawning reaction.


I think I yawn before a competition because I'm nervous and excited. It might be an uncontrolled action to cool down my brain or an action to make myself more alert. I don't know...:)
What I know, is that I have lots of photos of myself on warm-up with a yawning face!