It started with one knee in 1998. Four years later Liquid Ice was live on BBC One.

Liquid Ice starts with a left knee. In 1998 Gary Hassler wanted to get back on skis, and his damaged knee had other plans. A snug elastic wrap felt right. The heat that built up underneath it did not.

So he went looking for something that could do both: hold snugly and cool. He looked for months. The answer was clear: nothing like it existed anywhere in the world. That gap became the idea Liquid Ice still runs on, a bandage soaked in a liquid that evaporates off the fabric and takes heat with it. It needs no ice to do that, and no power either.

A ski day in St. Moritz

In 1999 Gary was skiing in St. Moritz on the same day the Austrian women’s national team was racing a World Cup event there. He went over to the team’s physio and explained the idea. The next day the first Liquid Ice wraps were in use.

A World Cup team as the first users, on day one. A product story could hardly ask for a better start.

Built in New Hampshire

Then things moved fast, in the United States. Research started in California, and in 2001 production began in New Hampshire at a company called Americool. The first outing was a Timberland triathlon and cycling event whose route ran right past the office.

In January 2002 came the official launch at SIA, America’s big snow sports trade fair. On 1 May BBC One’s Tomorrow’s World tested it live, presented by Olympic medallist Roger Black, with a thermal camera in the studio. In the summer it won the DuPont BrandNew Award at ISPO in Munich. On 5 August TIME wrote about it, after Men’s Journal, Self and Popular Science had, and the US magazine Sports Edge put Liquid Ice second in its Sports Product of the Year vote. In Germany, Kicker called it “a newly developed cooling liquid from the USA”.

Then the professionals arrived

In summer 2002 the physio of Germany’s national football team took Liquid Ice to the World Cup in Japan. In 2003 US Marines rated it 9.1 out of 10 in a field test. In 2004 Olympic teams from ten nations cooled with it in Athens. In 2011 it rode the Tour de France with Leopard-TREK, and in 2017 a Formula 1 team ordered it. Two of those stories have their own page here: the Marines and Athens.

What stayed the same

A few things have changed since 1998: the bottles, the bands, the address. The principle has not. Liquid Ice is a liquid made of water, alcohol, menthol and camphor. On fabric it evaporates and carries heat away from the skin. Today we fill it in Klosterneuburg near Vienna, as Liquid Ice e.U., and it has been on sale without a break for more than two decades.

The early bandage still exists, essentially unchanged: the Self Cooling Bandage, 360 ml of Liquid Ice and an elastic bandage to soak in it. If you would rather spray, take the 500 ml bottle and spray it on your shirt.