SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Feb 23, 2026–
ŌURA, maker of the world’s leading smart ring, Oura Ring, today announced a long-term partnership as the Official Wearable of Team Finland. As the exclusive provider in the category of continuous health and fitness tracking devices, ŌURA will equip Team Finland Olympic athletes with Oura Ring beginning immediately and continuing through the LA28 Olympic Games and the French Alps 2030 Winter Games.
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Team Finland delivered a strong showing on the world stage at the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026, capturing a total of six Olympic medals across a range of winter sports. During the Games, many Finnish athletes wore Oura Ring to help manage their performance and recovery.
The partnership marks the start of a multi-year collaboration focused on supporting athlete preparation, recovery, and overall wellbeing across two Olympic cycles.
“At ŌURA, we believe sustained performance begins with understanding how the body adapts to training and recovery over time,” said Tom Hale, chief executive officer at ŌURA. “As a company founded in Finland, we are especially proud to partner with the Finnish Olympic Committee and Team Finland across multiple Olympic cycles. This collaboration allows us to support athletes with meaningful insights into their readiness and wellbeing, while also advancing what we collectively know about preparation at the highest level of sport.”
Through the collaboration, Team Finland athletes will have access to continuous insights across sleep, readiness, recovery, cardiovascular health, and overall wellbeing. These metrics are designed to complement existing coaching and performance programs, helping athletes and support teams adapt to training demands and make informed decisions throughout intensive preparation periods.
The partnership will also extend to Team Finland’s Next Generation Team, which brings together rising athletes identified as the future of Finnish sport. By equipping these developing competitors with the same recovery and readiness insights, the collaboration supports long-term athlete development and builds continuity from early international competition through future Olympic cycles.
ŌURA and Team Finland will also conduct joint health research, contributing to a growing body of real-world evidence on how recovery and readiness influence sustained high performance.
“Elite competition places cumulative demands on the body,” said Ricky Bloomfield, MD, chief medical officer at ŌURA. “By combining continuous biometric insights with performance data over several years, this study will help deepen our understanding of how sleep and recovery behaviors support long-term adaptation and resilience. We’re proud to work alongside Team Finland to advance research that benefits both elite athletes and the broader athletic community.”
“We are extremely pleased to welcome a partner whose technological expertise is at the very highest global level,” said Janne Hänninen, Director of Team Finland and former Olympian. “The collaboration strengthens the overall ecosystem of coaching and performance support services and helps athletes and their support teams make increasingly informed decisions during demanding training and competition periods.”
The initiative reinforces a holistic approach to athlete health — recognizing that preparation for LA28 and beyond begins well in advance of the Games themselves. By integrating continuous health insights into daily routines now, athletes gain greater visibility into the foundational elements that influence recovery capacity and performance sustainability over time.
“Oura Ring is on my finger every night, and I check my recovery every morning,” said Lauri Vuorinen, Olympian in cross-country skiing. “At the highest level, managing load is absolutely critical. You must train at the edge to improve, but you can’t afford to cross the line. ŌURA helps me understand where that line is.”
This partnership builds on ŌURA’s broader work supporting Olympic athletes internationally, including its role as Official Wearable of Team USA and the LA28 Games and underscores a shared focus on advancing athlete wellbeing and reinforcing the role of recovery as a central component of elite performance.
About ŌURA
ŌURA delivers personalized health data, insights, and daily guidance with Oura Ring, the leading smart ring that helps you live healthier, longer. Guided by a mission to shift healthcare from sick care to prevention, ŌURA supports millions of members worldwide across sleep, activity, stress, readiness, women’s health, and heart health. Scientifically validated against medical gold standards, the lightweight Oura Ring tracks 50+ health metrics continuously, empowering both individuals and thousands of research teams, healthcare providers, and organizations. With 1,000 ecosystem partners across wellness and medicine, ŌURA is advancing the future of preventative health.
Founded in Finland in 2013, ŌURA has E.U. headquarters in Oulu and U.S. headquarters in San Francisco. ŌURA was last valued at approximately $11B—making it the world’s most valuable standalone wearable company. Learn more at ouraring.com or connect with ŌURA on Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok.
Oura Ring is not a medical device and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, monitor, or prevent medical conditions or illnesses.
About Team Finland
Team Finland is a network led by the Finnish Olympic Committee, Finland’s institutional sport brand and governing authority. It drives the strategic development of sport and physical activity nationally while representing the country internationally.
Through this unified structure, Team Finland brings together athletes, coaches, federations and expert services into one high-performance ecosystem built to enable international success. At its core stands the Olympic Team Finland, representing the nation at the Olympic Games and embodying national pride and the pursuit of excellence on the world’s biggest stage.
Alongside the Olympic Team, the Next Generation Team supports the rising stars and future of Finnish sport, accelerating their pathway toward international achievement.
ŌURA Named Official Wearable of Team Finland
PARIS (AP) — He is known as the French Banksy — or simply JR. Now the artist popular across France for large-scale projects, from photographs to graffiti and street art, wants Parisians to do something unusual on the city’s arguably most famous bridge: stop.
In June, he plans to transform the bustling bridge that dates back to the 17th century into a walk-through “cave” — a temporary, monumental public artwork that will cover the stone arches with a rocky illusion and invite visitors to cross the River Seine through a tunnel complete with sound and digitally augmented reality.
He says it’s possibly the “largest immersive installation ever made” and — one that will be accessible around the clock and offer a “totally different approach” to the bridge.
“We’re about to leave something pretty incredible in the middle of Paris,” JR told The Associated Press at his studio in eastern Paris, wearing his trademark hat and shades.
His project, the Pont Neuf Cavern is to run June 6-28, spanning 120 meters (yards) in length and over 17 meters in height.
The installation is a nod to a Paris legend: the late artistic duo Christo and Jeanne-Claude who in 1985 wrapped Pont Neuf — and its streetlamps — in a pale golden fabric. The project, which took years of negotiations with the authorities, helped define the genre of monumental public art in modern cities across the world.
To JR, the homage is both aesthetic and personal.
“I had the chance to meet Christo along the years,” he said. “We had big respect for each other’s work.”
While walking recently on the street with an AP crew, an older woman stopped JR — now, a household name in his country — to share her memories of the Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapping. She told him she was excited to see the bridge transformed again.
Still, JR — a pseudonym stemming from first name, Jean-René — acknowledges the weight of following in the iconic pair’s footsteps.
“It’s pretty hard to go after them,” he said, “but I’m doing it in a very different style, in my own way.”
His idea is about “bringing back mineral and nature” to the heart of Paris.
From the outside, his installation will make Pont Neuf look “as if it has been overtaken by a prehistoric outcrop,” a structure visible along the banks of the Seine — a rocky mass that is “literally going to break the landscape,” he said.
JR said there will be two main ways for people to experience his installation. From the outside, those heading to Pont Neuf will see the giant installation hundreds of meters away.
And from the inside, once visitors enter the “cave” on Pont Neuf, they will be able to walk through a long tunnel-like structure, having a feeling of “total immersion,” he said.
The cave will allow no daylight in and once inside, visitors “will lose track of time,” JR said.
A key collaborator on the project is Thomas Bangalter, a former member of French rock band Daft Punk who is creating the sound to accompany the installation — “something you’ll only hear from the inside,” JR said.
Snap’s AR studio in Paris is developing the augmented reality technology. Visitors will be able to use their smartphones to “experience and see things that you can’t see with your eyes,” JR said.
He is intentionally mysterious about what that is — keeping it a surprise until closer to the opening.
JR’s team conducted extensive engineering studies, including tests in a hangar at Paris’ Orly airport, to understand how the structure behaves, especially in an emergency when the electricity that fuels the cave’s air supply cuts off. Tests show the structure stays the same. There is also the security question — the bridge is a busy zone, especially during Paris’ tourist-packed early summer.
JR said visitor numbers will be limited at any given time, and that his team is consulting with authorities on that. During the three weeks of the exhibition, the installation will be continuously monitored.
JR is best known for his large-scale art — enormous portraits pasted on buildings, border walls and rooftops. Because of his origins in graffiti and street art he has inevitably drawn comparison with Banksy, the elusive U.K.-based artist famous for his huge murals and activism.
JR’s installation will not have any massive faces, but the theme is still human, he says: gathering, connection, and what people project onto a shared space.
He says his installation is also an allusion to Plato’s allegory of the cave in which chained men interpret shadows on the cave wall as reality, ignorant of the real world outside — and compares that to the fake reality created by the visual world of our social media platforms.
“What are our caves today is our phone,” JR said, “because we … believe that … our algorithm on social media … is the reality.”
During the installation, which will coincide with June’s Paris Fashion Week and World Music Day, the bridge will close to traffic.
A photomontage shows the project by French artist JR called Pont Neuf Cavern in his studio, in Paris, France, Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
French artist JR shows his project Pont Neuf Cavern during an interview with The Associated Press in his studio, in Paris, France, Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
A photomontage shows the project by French artist JR called Pont Neuf Cavern in his studio, in Paris, France, Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
French artist JR shows his project Pont Neuf Cavern during an interview with The Associated Press in his studio, in Paris, France, Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
French artist JR gestures during an interview with the Associated Press next to the Pont Neuf bridge about his project called Pont Neuf Cavern, in Paris, France, Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2026. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)