What are they wearing in Rio?

From ultra-light shoes and medal-ceremony jackets, to hand-painted sunglasses and intelligent fabrics, Olympic athletes' garb is available to the public like never before, writes Oliver Roberts

Ah yes, the Olympics - that time every four years when we all become experts on gymnastics and high-board diving. It may also be that time when we get a sudden and overwhelming urge to buy really colourful, really complicated and therefore really expensive sportswear to emulate our new heroes.

The past couple of Olympics have been unprecedented in that, thanks to globalisation, commercialisation and the ever-increasing might of major sports brands, you - even if you have horrible neck fat and can't carry more than two full shopping bags to your car without having to stop for a little break - are able to wear the ACTUAL, SAME shoes, socks, shorts and sunglasses that you see the athletes on TV wearing.

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The only differences being you have to pay for your stuff and the only record you're likely to break is, say, most episodes of Game of Thrones watched while wearing Nike Flyknit shoes with ultra-light, heat-infused TPU yarns.

The Olympic Games is when the sports brands go to war and display their latest styles and innovations.

Nike - official sponsor of the US team - has released more than 100 "Team USA" products, including the jackets the athletes will wear during the medal ceremony. (Ralph Lauren is also kitting out Team USA with a whole range of preppy clothing - you can buy, and customise, pretty much all of it.)

Adidas, sponsors of the Brits, has released replicas of their Stella McCartney-designed team kit.

However, things can get a little awkward for big brands when an athlete on a team that they're sponsoring is actually sponsored by someone else.

For instance, Nike-sponsored UK track-and-field athlete Katarina Johnson-Thompson upset Adidas before she'd even arrived in Rio by wearing Nike sneakers on the plane when she's expressly been told not to.

US decathlete Jeremy Tiawo's situation is even more fraught. He's sponsored by Brooks, which doesn't make shoes for the jumping and throwing events and he'll therefore spend some of his Olympic dream coming up with ways to cover up the logos on the Nike, Adidas and Asics shoes he'll be wearing for those events instead.

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Oakley has released its limited edition (100,000 pieces) "Green Fade" collection that you'll see athletes wearing during competition. The Green Fades are so called in deference to the colour of the brand's first "performance" sunglasses, released in 1980.

The latest ones will be hand-painted and feature Prizm lenses which, Oakley says, match different sports for an "optimised and personalised vision to improve performance".

Fabrics used in athletic attire have also become ridiculously advanced. Never mind compression socks and moisture-wicking materials, "phase change" fabrics have been developed that adjust their temperature according to the ambient air temperature, thereby keeping the athlete warm/cool, depending.

From what I've seen, the athletes who show best technological use of outfit/sunglasses/material-to-keep-your-body-at-a-constant-temperature (in this case really very hot) are the women beach volleyball players. They wear very little indeed and yet it's fascinating to watch.