At the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, temperatures will likely be Hotter than any other game‘ So far, athletes have been burned to death. An archer fainted, a table tennis player report “Mild heat stroke.” Organizers had already decided to move the marathon to Sapporo, Japan’s northernmost island, but as the event drew nearer, a heat wave negated any relief from the latitude. Organizers moved the race start up an hour to avoid the day’s highest temperatures. Still, the runners finished in heat approaching 86 degrees. Fifteen runners dropped out midway through the race, and the winning time in the women’s race was the 100 meters. 10 minutes late Higher than the winner’s personal best.
This Saturday and Sunday in Paris, Olympic athletes competing in the men’s and women’s marathons could be scorching hot again. Mild temperatures at the start of the morning might help, but the athletes will be running through a heatwave. And the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles could be even hotter. The world is getting warmer. Tokyo, for example, is 5th degree or more It’s risen 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since 1900. And since 1924, when Paris last hosted the Olympics, the city’s annual temperature has risen 3.2 degrees. The heat weighs down like a weight on even the most well-trained bodies, so the fastest Olympic marathon may become a thing of the past – as long as the Summer Olympics are held in the summer.
When muscles work, they generate heat. When the temperature and humidity outside is high and they can’t dissipate that heat, the body has to slow down. The cardiovascular system, the powerhouse of any athlete, works overtime to pump blood toward the skin to cool the body, robbing the rest of the athlete’s body of energy. And in elite speed sports, every bit of energy counts.
Heat most affects performance in long-distance events like cycling and running. “Any event that takes longer than a minute and a half, two minutes, high temperatures can definitely limit performance,” said Brad Wilkins, a physiology professor at the University of Oregon who studies human performance. In track and field, that would be races over 800 meters.
The longer you run, the more the heat takes its toll, which is why marathon times are the most likely to slow. Slower marathons are the norm at the Summer Olympics, which tend to take place during the host city’s hottest months. Records are rarely broken in endurance events at the Summer Olympics, with the exception of swimming, where the pool temperature is controlled, Wilkins says. One reason is that gold medals are more important than records; athletes aren’t trying to reach new heights of human achievement, they’re simply trying to win. “But the second reason is that it’s always hot.”
The International Olympic Committee has already postponed the announcement of the host city for the 2030 Winter Olympics. Met to decide How will they take into account the impact of climate change on future host cities? Rising winter temperatures have significantly narrowed the field of cities eligible to host the games. The IOC announced last month that France will host the 2030 Winter Olympics in the French Alps, while Utah will host the games in 2034. But the IOC president said: Stated Climate change will reduce the number of countries with suitable climates for the Winter Olympics to around 10 by 2040. Members of an IOC delegation who visited Salt Lake City in April said: Said The organization said, “Judging from all the climate reports we’ve read, we’re confident we can host it here through 2050,” but anything beyond 2060 will be a challenge for the famous ski city. The Winter Olympics may need to be moved further north to maintain temperatures cold enough for winter sports. And while it might make more sense to hold the hypothetical Summer Olympics in spring or fall, moving them to the Southern Hemisphere would work just as well. The 2032 Summer Olympics, scheduled for Brisbane, Australia, would probably be held in comfortable temperatures – although of course it would be winter in Australia.
Outside the Olympics, records will continue to be broken until the true limits of human beings are discovered, says Michael Joyner, a physician and exercise physiology expert at the Mayo Clinic. He’s not too worried about rising temperatures. People will find ways to avoid the heat, he told me. Races may move to cooler months, competitions may move north. More events will be held indoors. And heat training, where athletes train in hot environments to improve their ability to tolerate heat, will become a bigger part of athletes’ lives. “Heat training is the new altitude training,” he said. Chris Minson, a physiologist at the University of Oregon, said: found He found that training in the heat can benefit athletes even when racing in cool weather: When cyclists trained in 104-degree Fahrenheit heat for 10 days, they saw a 5 percent increase in their VO2 max, the maximum amount of oxygen the body can absorb and use during exercise, he found. In a one-hour time trial, 6 percent fasterEven in warm climates. Olympians in Paris reported To prepare, they spent time in saunas and trained in layers. “Everyone competing in athletics events over 400 meters in Paris will have gone through some sort of heat acclimatization protocol,” Wilkins told me.
Wilkins was part of a Nike-sponsored team that tried to create the perfect conditions to run the world’s fastest marathon in 2016. Engineers and physiologists designed every element of the event. Kenyan marathoner Eliud Kipchoge ran a private race in ideal temperatures, wearing advanced clothing, with other runners ahead of him to reduce wind resistance. He ran in two hours and 25 seconds. Thanks to his high-tech shoes, The biggest differencesIt reduced energy costs by 4 percent. In a similar experiment a few years later, Kipchoge broke the two-hour barrier, but the entire attempt was so meticulously orchestrated that it doesn’t count as a true “marathon” for world-record purposes.
The lesson? Advances in training routines, nutrition, clothing and technology are helping incredibly talented athletes like Kipchoge reach new heights of human performance.
Today’s top runners and cyclists are no different than those who competed in the 1950s and ’60s. Humans haven’t evolved into a faster species in that time. Joyner said today’s Tour de France winners “are probably not physiologically better than the great Eddy Merckx, who won this event five times in the ’60s and ’70s.” But most other elements of elite sports have changed. Bicycles have allowed riders to go faster using less energy. The tracks runners use have improved, reducing energy waste. Shoe technology has improved dramatically. “As long as the technology remains good and people continue to focus on really preparing these races to perform at their best, I don’t think we’re going to see world record speeds slow down,” Joyner said.
in 1991 paperJoyner has calculated perhaps the highest VO2 max ever. Lactate Threshold“Running economy is something humans can achieve. If a runner could achieve all three at the same time, the fastest marathon they could run in natural conditions would be one hour, 57 minutes, and 58 seconds,” he writes in his paper. That record hasn’t been achieved yet, but he imagines it will be achieved regardless of climate change.
Wilkins is a little less optimistic. “I grew up in the West, so I’ve seen wildfire seasons and their duration since I was a kid,” he says. He has an instinctive feeling that climate change may be moving faster than many people realize. So he can imagine that in 20 years, the fastest marathon time may have fallen back to 2 hours and 10 minutes, and times may start to slow as temperatures continue to rise, especially in longer events that are not practical to hold indoors. If that happens, fewer people may participate in the sport, which will have a ripple effect and reduce the quality of the entire sport. “The fewer people who participate in any sport, the less likely you are to find the human physiological and psychological components that can actually accomplish these incredible feats,” he says.
And yet every time our conversation shifted to the possibility that global warming might truly limit human potential in sport, Wilkins paused and brought the conversation back on track.
“When you start putting strict limitations on humans, I start to hesitate,” he says. Limitations imposed on humans in sports have never proven to be true in practice. And technologies unimaginable today may emerge to circumvent the problems that heat brings. “We are a creative species,” he says. Our bodies may not be able to adapt to the heat as quickly, but our behaviors, and the way we deal with the challenge, surely can.
