How future Olympics and athlete health could be threatened by climate change
Renee Tomlin was conditioned to run.
She was the New Jersey state champion in the 1,600-meter run and a cross country champion. But on her first practice as a freshman at Georgetown University years ago, something was off.
Washington, D.C.'s sweltering heat and humidity cast a weighted blanket over her.
"I'm really not fit," Tomlin thought that late-summer day before she collapsed from heat exhaustion. A maintenance worker found her, and teammates doused her body with water while awaiting an ambulance.
"It was the most thirsty I've ever been in my life," Tomlin, now a 32-year-old world champion triathlete, said.
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Year after year, the global temperature has risen. Since 1880, the combined land and ocean temperature increased at an average rate of 0.13 degrees each decade, according to the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Last year was the second-hottest year on record.
Rings of Fire, a study conducted by the British Association for Sustainable Sport, found that the mean annual temperature in Tokyo has risen by 2.86 degrees since 1900 – three times as fast as the world average.
The Tokyo Olympics end on Sunday and the Paralympics begin Aug. 24. August has historically been the hottest month on average in Tokyo and can have a heat index of 101.3 degrees.
Tokyo’s summers have been known for being intensely hot and humid. Throughout the Olympics, Tokyo's temperature has hovered in the 90s, dampening countless athletes' performances while putting many at risk.
As the Earth gets warmer, and heat waves become more frequent, the overall effects of climate change may affect athlete health, and, therefore, their performance.
"When atmospheric temperatures are elevated, that takes a very specific toll on an individual's ability to thermal regulate," said Earl Cooper, a professor at the University of Georgia who has researched exertional heat illness in sports.
Heat and athletic performances
Norway's Kristian Blummenfelt won the gold medal in the men's individual triathlon on July 26. After crossing the finish line, he collapsed and then vomited before he was helped back to his feet and taken away on a wheelchair.
The triathlon, which features a 0.93-mile (1,500-meter) swim, a 24.8-mile (40-kilometer) bike and a 6.2-mile (10-kilometer) run, had to be moved up to prevent heat exhaustion.
During the U.S. Olympic Trials in June, heptathlete Taliyah Brooks fainted and the trials in Eugene, Oregon – a city where temperatures average that month is 74 degrees – were temporarily suspended as temperatures soared to 108 degrees.
Svetlana Gomboeva, a Russian archer, needed staff and teammates to apply ice packs to her forehead while she was helped out of the arena after she collapsed following her qualifying event for the Tokyo Olympics on July 23.
The Russian team doctor said sunstroke was the cause of the collapse and that the team would change Gomboeva's hydration and rest regime to combat the high temperatures and humidity in Tokyo.
And in golf, the women's event in Tokyo may be cut to 54 holes because of a tropical storm forecast to arrive Saturday. The current heat index, 108 degrees, makes it unsafe to send players out for more than 18 holes a day.
On Wednesday, players battled through a toasty 18 holes with a heat index of 111 degrees on the course at Kasumigaseki Country Club. World No. 1 Nelly Korda cooled off by drinking several bottles of water, and elsewhere on the course, teammate Danielle Kang was seen pouring water on her neck.
Filipino golfer Bianca Pagdanganan cooled off her own way with an ice pack on her head. Meanwhile, golfers walked the course with electrolyte tablets to help their hydration.
As temperatures continue to rise and athletes continue performing outdoors, managing athletes' core temperatures is crucial to keeping them healthy during hot conditions, Cooper said. If a body's core temperature reaches 104 degrees, he said, that becomes a cause for concern as heat illnesses may occur. The normal body temperature is around 98 degrees.
Athletes competing in hot temperatures can be susceptible to heat exhaustion, heat stroke and hyperthermia. They occur when the body can't cool itself properly, resulting in a rapid rise in core temperature, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Heat illnesses are not uncommon, but can be deadly if not treated properly.
Niall Moyna, professor in the school of health and human performance at Dublin City University, said that athletes can produce 30 to 40 times more heat during a marathon.
Recovery from heat exhaustion can take up to 48 hours. Heat stroke may take months to recover from, and it can result in organ damage.
Yet, when competing, Tomlin said athletes have to delicately balance pushing themselves for the sake of their times and reading their bodies to understand where their limits may be.
"It's definitely going to make you slower overall," said Hailey Danz, a 30-year-old triathlete and two-time Paralympian who won silver in Rio.
Danz said while heat is most often felt on the run than biking, a large cause for concern is water temperatures. In Tokyo, the water was 89.82 degrees the day Blummenfelt won gold.
"Swimming in bathwater like that is just going to slow you down," Danz said. "If it doesn't slow you down, and you are able to muscle your way through it, what you're gonna end up doing is just digging yourself into a hole that you can't get out of."
If conditions at a race are hotter than expected, more often than not athletes have to make last-minute adjustments to their warmup to keep their core temperatures down, Tomlin said.
Acclimating to something different
Tomlin was getting ready to compete in the 2015 Chengdu ITU Word Cup in China. She had only been in the sport for about 18 months at that point and had developed a strict warm-up routine.
Before the race, her coach told her they needed to cut out running from her warmup for the sake of Tomlin's safety.
"Oh man it was so hot that day," Tomlin said. Still, at the time she didn't understand the need to sacrifice a portion of her warmup. But saving that bit of energy likely gave her an edge in the race and allowed her to push herself and later win the race.
It's now a reality of the sport that Tomlin grew to embrace because keeping her core temperature down means there may be less of a gamble when it comes to exerting more effort mid-race.
Modern suits use technology to repel heat from racers' bodies. Water bottles need to be readily available to hydrate racers and cool them down. Racers are given Gatorade slushies to drink during their bike courses.
Still, Tomlin said races can be wars of attrition than world record-shattering finishes due to hot conditions.
But it's easy to get caught up in their performance data while forsaking monitoring how their core temperature may be, Danz said.
"Triathletes, they're often glued to the power meter, or to their watch that's telling them their running pace, and in the heat, you just can't do that," Danz said. "I actually feel like it takes a lot of athletic maturity to be able to separate yourself from those numbers."
So to prepare for the heat, and maximize output under the given conditions, athletes spend weeks acclimating themselves.
Athletes need around 7-14 days to acclimate their bodies to the conditions of races before they travel and compete, Cooper said.
"The body has a has a pretty cool means with which it can adapt to that if given enough time," Cooper said.
Colorado Springs was chosen as a location for one of the Olympic and Paralympic training centers because of its high elevation of 6,035 feet. Its facilities house an Olympic-size swimming pool, an indoor shooting range, the Olympic Training Center Velodrome, numerous gymnasiums and weight rooms, a sports science laboratory and a dining hall.
It's there where athletes have countless tools to acclimate themselves, though there are other tricks they can do on their own.
For Tomlin, sometimes it means wearing an extra layer of clothes on runs or sitting in a sauna while regulating the fluids she drinks that day.
Some sports or nations have the financial flexibility to provide equipment and travel to train in areas where the climate is similar to what they'll be competing in, Cooper said. But that's not always accessible for all athletes.
"It can be very expensive," Cooper said. "That's a disadvantage to a lot of countries that don't have the financial means with which they can take their teams and do the best they can."
Check the air
Even if an athlete meticulously crafts their schedule to get them in the proper shape and acclimation, there's still a factor of climate change that needs to be considered: air quality.
According to the CDC, climate change can make air less healthy to breathe. Higher temperatures can lead to an increase in allergens, harmful pollutants and ozone. Similarly, more and larger wildfires linked to climate change could also significantly reduce air quality.
Breathing air pollutants can lead to shortness of breath, coughing, wheezing and may trigger asthma episodes. Exposure may also put athletes at risk for lung cancer, heart attacks and in extreme cases, death.
Last summer, there were days training had to be moved indoors because of the poor air quality, Danz said. Some days they had to wear masks while training, other times required compromise.
"On the days where it was super smoky, the compromise was, 'Alright, it's fine to be outside if you're going easy, but if we're adding any kind of intensity you gotta move inside,' " Danz said.
She said over the summer, some of her teammates in Oregon couldn't even exercise indoors because the air quality was so poor.
"It's definitely something we need to be aware of," Danz said.
What does this mean for the future?
As climate change continues, there's a growing concern as to how that impacts future competitions, especially as it pertains to increased temperatures.
The Rings of Fire study highlighted that at the 2019 World Athletics Championships in Doha, Qatar, 28 of the 68 starters in the women's marathon failed to finish because of heat and humidity. The event was run at midnight as an adjustment to the hot climate.
To combat the heat, the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar will be held in November, a contrast to the event's usual summer schedule.
Andrew J. Grundstein, a professor at the University of Georgia who researches climate and human health, told USA Today Sports that there may be an increased reliance on host cities developing the infrastructure necessary to keep athletes safe from extreme heat.
"I think what's increasingly common is people giving a lot more thought to preparing events for hot conditions," Grundstein said.
It's why, Grundstein said, there is a focus on researching regions and preparing for variances in heat ahead of time in order to know what to expect when thousands of athletes gather to compete at events like the Olympics.
Still, as in the case of the Olympic Trials in Eugene, there are surprises.
"This is an area that doesn't get these kinds of temperatures," Grundstein said of the 100-plus-degree heat wave. "The fact that it's aligned with a major, trial for the Olympics was pretty surprising to me. But it also reinforced my thinking that you really do have to plan for the worst."
The next Summer Olympics will be held in Paris, then Los Angeles in 2028. Last year, Paris suffered one of the worst heat waves in more than a century, with temperatures reaching 102 degrees Fahrenheit. This year, California was blanketed by blistering heat waves that set record temperatures across the state.