WATCH ANY PROFESSIONAL sports person arrive at their event this weekend and you are likely to see them wearing a pair of dustbin lid-sized headphones.
Listening to the music in a bid to relax and focus their mind on the job at hand is common practice and used by many athletes – but the sheer enormity of their equipment seems to have got out of hand.
The widespread popularity of Beats by rap legend Dr Dre in recent years has helped the cause and while top level footballers are often seen walking from the team bus to the dressing room, it is a trend clearly visible in most sports – as the slideshow below shows.
Rio Ferdinand
Isaac Sopoaga
Bjorn Helge Riise, Eddie Johnson and Clint Dempsey
Alasdair Stokosch and Sean Lamont
Thierry Henry
Michael Phelps
Cristiano Ronaldo
Bradley Wiggins
Mardy Gilyard
LeBron James
Katie Bell
Wilfried Zaha
Paddy Wallace and Andrew Trimble
Have your say… what do you make of huge headphones?
Poll Results:
Not for me, Jeff (184)
I don't leave the house without mine (55)
pure status symbol. cost anything from 300-1000 for the ones they are wearing and they look ridiculous
Looks like a pair of saucepans, completely daft. Mad thing is plenty of eejits keen to be seen wearing them
look like something from the dewalt catalogue.
A complete tool.
There may be some posing here but the sound outa these big bins is way superior to the in ear ones. They also provide noise-cancelling.
So there’s a good justification for them.
I bought a fake pair of beats by dre head phones in Thailand and they are brilliant. Great sound and they are great sound cancelers too. But on the move I use the in-ear head phones out of practicality
Generally better sound from these reference class cans, though often only audiophiles can notice the subtle differences between mids highs and lows once you move into this area.
In fairness to Ferdinand he has his own record label.
He’s listening to duran duran,
don’t like them too big but some of the smaller overhead headphones like Panasonic for ?40
pioneer even
good to see geordi l forge got a job after next generation finished