The nail olympics: An unvarnished look at Britain's most bizarre contest

By David Wilkes for the Daily Mail
Updated: 04:00 EDT, 24 September 2010

The tension is palpable inside the packed arena. At stake is not just personal honour, but national pride, too. Team-mates huddle together as they psych themselves up before each demanding category, their faces wracked with concentration.

Some 354 competitors from 24 countries are here, record numbers, and they’ve been in training for years to claw their way up the rankings.

‘This is one of the most important competitions in the world. You come to demonstrate your skill and show what your country can offer,’ says Carmelina Gandolfo, 32, from the Italian team, summing up the sense of occasion.

A matter of honour: The Nailympics have been held in Britain for the last six years and competition is fierce, particularly in the 'fantasy nail art' category, which is a guaranteed crowd-pleaser

‘There is rivalry because everyone thinks he is the king. It’s normal. People don’t speak to each other before the event and there a lot of nerves. But afterwards, we are friends and talk.’

Welcome to Nailympics 2010, the self-styled ‘Olympic Games of fake nails’.
Here, once a year, the world’s top manicurists battle it out for medals in gruelling events such as ‘fibreglass tip and overlay’, ‘gel sculpture’ and ‘fantasy nail art’.

Exotic fingernails first came to most people’s attention in the 1980s via the world-record breaking sprinter Florence Griffith Joyner, better known as Flo-Jo.

The late U.S. athlete sported 6in talons, and at the 1988 Olympics she patriotically painted them red, white, blue — and gold to signify her goal.

At its most basic level today, nail art involves glueing artificial acrylic pieces onto natural nails and then painting them. More exotic methods of decoration include airbrushing the acrylic nails and embedding them with tiny gems or trinkets.

This is what the ‘fantasy nail art’ category is all about at the Nailympics, and it’s an undoubted crowd-pleaser — an explosion of creative madness where artists build whole scenes on their models’ fingers. Fairies, forests and angels are favourite designs, but some cute Beatrix Potter characters also put in an appearance this year.

They all look a bit bonkers to the uninitiated and are, by any measure, totally impractical.

Not only are the lovingly crafted figurines so fragile you would knock them off in seconds if you tried to wash the dishes, but you also risk electrocution with some of the more elaborate designs, which feature flashing lights and revolving pagodas discreetly wired up to batteries strapped to the wrist.

But according to the organisers, the techniques involved in making these amazing flights of fancy ‘feed down to everyday nails’, so it’s not really that silly at all. 

‘It may look ridiculous,’ one judge explained, ‘but no more so than some of the clothes you would see at a high fashion show in Paris. It displays a mastery of the nail technician’s craft.’

In comparison, most of the other ­disciplines, while undoubtedly also requiring great skill and artistic flair, are not particularly enthralling as spectator sports.

The competitors sit hunched over desks, building and painting perfect, long nails. A miniature flag denoting the competitor’s country stands on each desk so you know who to cheer for.

They work with an array of liquids, powders and paints which fill the air with pungent chemical aromas (some competitors even wear paper masks over their mouths and noses). They compete not just against each other but also against strict time limits.

Flights of fancy: The recession has done little quell the public's demand for manicures, with women still seeing them as a relatively cheap pampering treat

Few people outside the nail industry — apart from the busloads of visiting student beauticians — have heard of Nailympics, but this is its sixth year.

It’s gaining in popularity all the time, and this year was part of the Olympia Beauty Show at London’s Earls Court, which attracted 30,000 visitors.

The industry is now worth an estimated £50million a year, and nail technicians can subscribe to their very own dedicated magazine called Scratch.

The recession appears to have done little to quell the public’s demand for manicures, with women still seeing them as a relatively cheap ­pampering treat.

For around £35 you can get a smart French polish (clear lacquer with white tips), while for £60 to £100 you can decorate your digits with some eye-catching 'nail art'. The development of new gels mean they will stay flawless for up to a fortnight.

But while Britain does a jolly good job of staging the Nailympics, guess what? We have a reputation for being a bit rubbish when it comes to competing in it.

Our team numbered only six entrants this year and, according to the pundits, the UK is generally lagging behind the countries that dominate the world nail stage, such as Japan, Korea, China, Russia, the U.S. and Hungary.

But don’t despair — we have at least one bright hope. Step forward Kirsty Meakin, a 32-year-old mother-of-two from Stoke-on-Trent.

She started her training on a YTS course aged 17, has been competing internationally for five years and is the only nail technician from these shores to have attained global recognition. 

Her speciality is the ‘mixed media’ event, where you paint a set of ten nails so it looks like a continuous scene across them. They are prepared before the competition and displayed in a box rather than on a model.

Kirsty spent a month painting her ‘fantasy fairy’ design for Nailympics 2010. ‘I live, eat and breathe nails,’ she says.

In true elite athlete fashion, she’s even got a special way of getting ready for competitions.

A huge Michael Jackson fan, she keeps a photo of him on her competition desk for luck. She also has a tattoo of his initials on the back of her neck, and plans to get the chords to his hit Man In The Mirror tattooed up her spine to go with it.

‘If I start to lose the plot a bit in a competition I look at the photo and think: “Michael’s looking over me.” It calms me down. I wouldn’t be the person I am today if it wasn’t for Michael. He taught me not to be afraid, to be a bit wacky and different. I’m known for my weird and wonderful creations. He’s an example of how to express yourself artistically.

Tip-top: The meticulously crafted figurines often tell a tale across ten fingernails. Organisers admit they may look a little ridiculous, but liken them to the clothes you may see on the catwalk in Paris - a source of inspiration rather than to be copied

‘Nails can be a very serious business. It can be bitchy behind the scenes, but I don’t get involved in all that. In competitions I might be bricking it inside, but I always try to enjoy it.’

On competition days, registration is at 7am, with the first category at 7.30am, so it means an early start for the competitors.

Kirsty — who entered six categories at ‘masters’ level — was so busy making sure she was perfectly prepared that she managed only two hours’ sleep on the eve of the opening day.

First up was ‘acrylic nail sculpture’ and, like several competitors, she was worried the room was too cold, making it difficult to use some vital products as they were setting too quickly.

She became so frustrated she even put away her Jacko photo, fearing his powers had been erased and declaring it ‘redundant’. But she soldiered on - and her resilience paid off.

Having come second in ‘embellished nail art’ and third in ‘mixed media’, she also scooped the title of highest scoring individual for the whole contest.

The medals were presented amid much high-pitched whooping, weeping and hugging from the lucky few.

Afterwards, Kirsty said: ‘I hope this will inspire more UK entrants next year. I think a lot of them are afraid of the overseas competition. But to learn and get better you simply have to enter these competitions.’

With that impassioned call to arms, off Kirsty walked with her armfuls of silverware. And so Nailympics came to an end for another year. You could say the whole thing had been nail-biting... but not literally, for obvious reasons.