Abstract
Sports can be broadly defined as physical activities requiring skill that can be performed individually or as part of a team. Sports currently provide opportunities for socialization, entertainment, cultural expression, physical fitness, and benefits to health. However, the sporting environment presents unique challenges to the dermatological health of its participants. Sports present its participants with environmental challenges, such as exposure to solar ultraviolet radiation in outdoor sports linked to skin carcinogenesis with inadequate protection, extremes of cold linked to frostbite, and marine environments linked to unique marine pathogens that can contaminate wounds. Equipment used in sports can be a source of cutaneous injury or hypersensitivity reactions, such as blisters induced by ill-fitting climbing shoes or contact dermatitis from swim goggles. Sports expose participants to unique physiological stressors that can induce dermatological conditions ranging from traction alopecia in breakdancers to talon noir caused by traumatic intraepidermal hemorrhages from shearing forces on the feet experienced by racquet sport players. The Spaniard Diego Durán described, roughly half a millennia ago, the large hematomas that Mesoamerican ball players would obtain playing their sport, that would be treated with lancing highlighting the long history of identification and treatment of cutaneous and dermatological conditions.