At the 2024 Paris Olympics, athletes are competing against the world’s toughest opponents, clocks, record books and increasingly, extreme heat.
the rain Soaked the opening ceremonyBut it followed a massive heatwave across France and much of Europe. According to World Weather Attribution The research team says such temperatures would not have been possible without human-induced climate change. Competitions Started with more heat as temperature reached 95 degrees At an outdoor venue. Athletes have complained about the lack of adequate cooling in the Olympic Village where they live and some groups Anna Their own air conditioning unitsStrategies such as reducing the host city’s goals to curb energy use Underfloor cooling.
For competitors chasing wins by seconds or even lessHigh temperature has been a frustrating confounding variable. Host City No stranger to extreme heat. Fortunately, no athletes have passed out so far at the Paris Games. But as 2024 is taking shape hottest on recordSome current and former competitors are warning that a warming planet is posing more fundamental challenges to the Summer Olympics as we know them.
In a report released before the nonprofit Olympics British Association for Sustainable SportAthletes and researchers have expressed their concern about how climate change is reducing performance, health and the future potential of their events.
“For athletes, the consequences can be varied and wide-ranging, from minor performance-impacting issues such as sleep disturbances and last-minute event time changes, to health impacts and heat-related stress and injuries,” said Sebastian Coe, president of World Athletics. The international governing body of track and field sports, wrote in the report.
As “global temperatures continue to rise,” Coe said, “climate change should increasingly be viewed as an existential threat to sport.”
The good news is that organizers of the Paris Olympics seem to have learned important lessons on heat management from past events. The 2020 Tokyo Olympics to be held in 2021 was considered at that time The hottest Olympics in historyThe average temperature is about 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Performance of many athletes decreased and some tennis players and archers suffered Heat exhaustion and heat stroke. at least 110 athletes reported heat-related illness At the Tokyo Olympic Games.
Beyond the Olympics Numerous sports tournaments And practice session Where there are athletes pass out Due to extreme heat. In In some casesThis is the temperature leading to death.
Extreme heat is obviously not something that can or should shock athletes, although it is often not easily avoided for outdoor sports. This is forcing organizers of major events like the Olympics to take extra precautions to protect athletes.
“Climate change should be seen as an existential threat to sport.”
As the Games come to a close, athletes set their sights on the next competition, incl 2028 Olympics in Los AngelesOrganizers are grappling with the reality that some tough outdoor endurance sports will require more drastic measures, from scheduling events too early or late in the day to moving some competitions away from host cities. For future Olympians, the ideal training window is narrowing for most of the year, which can be throttling the pipeline of new athletes entering competition.
And if climate change continues unchecked, most major cities may disappear Too hot to host the Summer Olympics Before the end of the century.
The Summer Olympics must adapt to a warming world
Why are we continuing the Olympics in the summer?
A big factor is television and sponsorship. Although the Games were conceived as a competition between amateurs, many Olympians now do it for a living. Their home sports leagues often go on hiatus in the summer, which clears the schedules for athletes to attend games and clear the airwaves to show them. Changing the time of the event to the spring or fall means reducing the audience, and thus the advertiser dollars, between football, baseball and football.
All of this creates financial pressure to hold these events in the warmer weather months — but it also makes the Games more dangerous and expensive, increasing the costs for organizers to invest in cooling and preventing heat illness.
The Summer Olympics are also a tradition, but as temperatures rise around the world, the future will look a lot less like the past. Athletes will have less ideal sites for training for outdoor events. Olympic hopefuls have to travel to better places to practice or find expensive, specialized training facilities. This will further disadvantage the underfunded and, in the long run, make it harder for new athletes to pick up the sport, especially from less affluent countries.
This is already happening with the Winter Olympics because fewer cities produce reliable snow and ice, which makes hosting more expensive and harder to train athletes.
With the amount of money and prestige at play, the Olympic event isn’t going anywhere. But for on-field competitors and youngsters hoping to one day step into their shoes, there will be fewer places where they can fulfill their dreams.
The heat is already changing the game
There are steps that planners of major sporting events are taking to combat the heat. One is to move some major outdoor events to cooler areas. During the Tokyo Olympics, the marathon was actually held in Sapporo, Japan, more than 600 miles north of Tokyo. The cooler weather there helped, but it broke the tradition of finishing the marathon inside the Olympic Stadium, and there were still quite a few runners. Fainting and vomiting as they cross the finish line.
Another option is to schedule the competition during the cooler part of the year. There are precedents for this. D 1964 Tokyo Olympics It was actually held in October in part to avoid the hot weather. During the 2019 World Athletics Championships in Qatar, The marathon starts at midnight. More recently, the 2022 FIFA World Cup soccer tournament, in Qatar, was held in November and December instead of the country’s unbearably hot summer months.
There are also ways athletes can protect themselves. “The best way to prepare for competition in the heat is to train in the heat,” according to one Paris Olympics planning document. This can take the form of acclimatization, where athletes practice in a warm, natural environment, or acclimatization, where competitors train in artificially warm environments or wear extra layers of clothing to acclimate to warmer temperatures. But it’s a slow process, requiring athletes to begin their heat exposure two weeks before competition begins.
During the event, organizers must pay close attention to the ambient weather – specifically, the wet bulb globe temperature. It is a measure that models how well the human body can cool itself through sweat, and many sports regulators consider it a better measure of heat risk than temperature or heat index alone.
D International Tennis FederationFor example, the Olympics have an extreme weather protocol that triggers when the wet bulb globe temperature reaches 30 degrees Celsius, or about 86 degrees Fahrenheit. It allows for a 10-minute break between tennis sets where a player can leave the court to shower, change, eat or drink. But if the temperature rises, an advisory group will meet and decide whether to postpone the game.
For athletes who exceed their limits and suffer heat stroke, there is a protocol to help them cool down, but timing is critical. “You have a 30-minute window to get someone’s temperature below 104 from the start to guarantee survival,” says Douglas CasaA professor of kinesiology at the University of Connecticut who helped draft plans for the Tokyo Olympics Exertional heat stroke in athletes.
Prolonged heat exposure with the intense exertion of a match or race can quickly become dangerous. Athletes can experience heat exhaustionCauses extreme fatigue, dizziness, cramps, tight skin and nausea. That can then be progress Heat strokewhere the body’s core temperature rises above 104 degrees Fahrenheit, causing the organs to shut down.
To help an athlete with heat stroke, the first step is to diagnose the condition, usually by taking a rectal temperature. Then the plan is “cool first, transport second.” The gold standard for cooling a heat stroke victim is an ice bath. Only after the body temperature begins to drop do you take the athlete to a medical facility. “You can’t give up all those minutes waiting for an ambulance on site and then waiting for a hospital to get care,” said Casa, who also leads Corey Stringer InstituteNamed after the Minnesota Vikings player who died of excessive heat stroke in 2001.
This means having an emergency cooling setup ready to go to the event venue. But the best strategy is to prevent such complications in the first place.
Athletes need to stay calm to be competitive
Most athletes have a personal ideal temperature range where they know they will perform at their best. But part of the challenge (and some fun) in many sports is dealing with what nature throws at you.
Some temperature-sensitive competitions are long-distance outdoor races, such as marathons or cycling. “We know as it gets hotter, they slow down,” he said Andrew J. CornerstoneA professor of geography at the University of Georgia who served on the Adverse Weather Advisory Committee for the Tokyo Olympics.
Because heat effects scale with time and intensity. Prolonged exposure to high temperatures can lead to dehydration and fatigue. Muscles work less efficiently. And as humidity increases, sweat doesn’t evaporate as easily, making it harder to cool the body.
Another concern is that higher temperatures make it worse air pollution. Hot, dry weather can create conditions for airborne dust, while high temperatures accelerate the formation of ozone, a pollutant that can impair breathing and cause heart problems.
And in big competitions, athletes aren’t the only ones who have to endure the heat. The staff and spectators may not push themselves as hard as the people on the field, but they face the same weather. there is Free water refill station For participants in the Paris Olympics, and at some events, volunteers sprayed fans Hose and mr.
Another vulnerable group to consider is the workers who build stadiums and prepare cities to host major events. They are out of the spotlight but working against tight deadlines, which can cause safety lapses or force workers to be out in dangerous conditions for long periods of time. In the months leading up to the 2022 FIFA World Cup football tournament in Qatar, Hundreds of workers died in fiery weather. And after the closing ceremony, workers have to clean and dismantle all the infrastructure.
Although athletes in the Olympics are among the world’s most privileged people, what we learn by pushing the limits of human performance to keep them safe could help protect many more people from warming. the planet
