Athletes issue warning about extreme heat at Summer Olympics

Athletes are raising concerns about how extreme heat could affect the Summer Olympics in Paris, according to a new report. report. They are concerned that rising temperatures pose serious health risks to competitors and spectators, not to mention suffering performance.

Average temperatures during the months in which the Summer Olympics are typically held have increased by more than 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) since the last time the Games were held in Paris in 1924, according to the report. Every fraction of a degree of difference can have an impact, considering that even a 0.5 degree Celsius increase in core body temperature can increase a person’s heart rate by up to 10 beats per minute. At worst, this can lead to heat exhaustion that can worsen into heatstroke without any intervention.

Summers are getting hotter with climate change, setting the stage for riskier outdoor competitions. That means more action needs to be taken to protect athletes and their fans, advocates say, especially with the upcoming Games in Paris expected to be devastating.

“At the very least, the impacts of heat put athletes at a competitive disadvantage, disrupting their sleep and forcing them to train earlier and earlier in the morning just to avoid the worst temperatures of the day,” says JK Tuwei, president of Athletics Kenya, at report. report. “But it’s what comes after that, if we don’t act with enough urgency to address climate change, that worries me most. Incidences such as athletes collapsing during or after the end of competitions remind us of this threat and the impact of climate change on sport.”

O report was published today by the British Association for Sustainable Sport (BASIS), a not-for-profit trade organization whose members include major sports clubs and facilities. Physiologists at the University of Portsmouth Mike Tipton and Jo Corbett also contributed to the report, as did the non-profit research organization Climate Central. Nearly two dozen elite athletes – from track and field stars to rowers, football players, marathon swimmers and more – added their testimonies about how the extremely high temperatures affected them.

Tennis player Marcus Daniell, who, at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, won the bronze medal for New Zealand in men’s doubles, wrote about how difficult it was to stay hydrated in the heat and humidity that year. This made headaches and lethargy “normal” during the Games, he says in the report.

To me, it’s like you’re bracing yourself for the worst part of a bad flu – the chills, the weirdness, the heat and the cold. Your mind can’t focus and your mouth is terribly dry. And the dangerous thing is that athletes often don’t know when to stop, because we are generally conditioned to go beyond our limits.”

… “I’m worried. I’ve been to tournaments where there have been double-digit withdrawals for heatstroke in one day. That’s not how the sport should be played.”

Dangers also exist for swimmers who dive into warm waters, says British marathon swimmer Amber Keegan in the report. World Aquatics (formerly FINA) has set a maximum water temperature limit of 31 degrees Celsius (87.8 degrees Fahrenheit) for open water swimming after American athlete Fran Crippen died during a race in dangerously hot open water in the United Arab Emirates in 2010.

Physically, there are a lot of impacts from extreme heat – cramps, fatigue (much more than normal), and vomiting (which is especially bad because you lose the nutrition you consumed during the run). You don’t want to use energy to cool off when you could use it to swim faster.

That’s just the performance side, but on the safety side, if you’re struggling to think clearly, you won’t make a sensible decision about whether you’re overheating so much that you should leave. Sure, there’s security support, but ultimately it’s you who has to raise your hand and say “get me out of here.”

Paralympic athletes also face risks when competing at the Paris Games in August and September. Some competitors may have conditions that affect the body’s ability to thermoregulate. One survey of more than 100 athletes at the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics found that 21% of them reported experiencing at least one “heat stress-related symptom.”

The report presents a set of recommendations to ensure that athletes can be at their best and that the public is treated to a good show. This includes more structured guidelines on when to postpone or cancel an event due to heat and proactively scheduling events for cooler times of the day or in cooler locations. Built-in water and cool-down breaks can also be beneficial for competitors, support staff and fans, the report says. It even calls on sports organizations to reevaluate their relationships with fossil fuel companies whose greenhouse gas emissions are causing climate change. “Sponsorship can bring much-needed funding, but the long-term cost of such partnerships must be re-evaluated,” the report states.

In an email to On the edgeThe International Olympic Committee (IOC) said it addressed many of the issues outlined in the new report in its “consensus statement on recommendations and regulations for sporting events in the heat” Published in 2022. This article encourages greater collaboration between local, national and international sports organizations. It also says athletes should “specifically prepare for the environmental conditions expected” at an event.

Local event organizers need to be transparent about environmental risks before and during the event and provide preventative measures and medical care for heat-related illnesses, the paper states. The IOC also said the local organizing committee in Paris worked with medical experts to keep athletes safe and healthy during this year’s games, which begin in late July.