Few events match the exhilaration of the Olympic Games’ opening ceremony. As the 2024 Games in Paris prepare to kick off on July 26 amid much anticipation, another discussion is gaining momentum alongside the athletic feats to come—how climate change is affecting sports? The Paris 2024 Olympics could be one of the hottest Games in human history with real concerns mounting over the implications of climate change on athletic performance and safety to come.
“The increasing temperatures and changing weather patterns are reshaping the landscape of sports, posing significant risks to athletes and events.”
According to the official website, the Games cover 32 sports and more than 10,000 athletes will compete in 329 medal events in a wide range of disciplines with 19 of them taking place outdoors, including track and field, sailing, equestrian, rowing and archery. It is these athletes who will be directly in the sun’s glare.
Given that the Games are being held in Paris in July and August</a href="https://weatherspark.com/y/47913/Average-Weather-in-Paris-France-Year-Round", the hottest months of the year in the city of light, some weather forecasters are already predicting temperatures of 26.7℃ (80℉) for many of the competition days in the French capital. While this may not seem to be an extreme temperature, if you take into account the Heat Index, it becomes much more worrying.
People’s experience coping with heat is often not determined by temperature alone; scientists measure such experiences using the heat index, which often exceeds the air temperature because it takes into account both temperature and relative humidity, which affects how effectively the body can cool itself through perspiration.
As a result rising temperatures have already led to disruptions in event schedules and location changes to cooler times or venues, which could impact athlete preparation and performance. The global thermostat continues to climb, athletes across many disciplines are being forced to confront a new adversary that doesn’t discriminate based on skill level, extreme heat.
“With global temperatures continuing to rise, climate change should increasingly be viewed as an existential threat to sport.”
The Evidence So Far
One of the leading pieces of available analysis on this topic came from the British Association for Sustainable Sport (BASIS), with the help of notable heat physiologists and climate scientists from University of Portsmouth and 11 Olympians. It looked at the all too real and serious threat extreme heat poses to top athletes in their report, “Rings of Fire”, the second such report.
The Rings of Fire concludes that athletes are indeed not just competing against each other, but also against the escalating threats posed by our warming planet and it is a real and serious threat.
Paris is No Stranger to A Changing Climate
Since France last hosted the Olympic Games in 1924, the average temperature in Paris has risen by 3.1°C, (5.6°F) posing significant challenges and risks to hosting the Games in Europe – the fastest warming continent on earth.
The frequency and intensity of heatwaves in the Paris region are rising dramatically, between 1947 and 2023, the region has experienced 50 heatwaves, and the situation has been particularly severe in recent years. The devastating heatwave of 2003 resulted in more than 15,000 deaths across France as whole. As recently as 2019, Paris recorded its highest ever temperature of 42.6°C (108.7℉); this heat wave killed 1,435 people across France.
The Global Trend
It is far from just Paris where the temperature is rising. According to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), each month from June 2023 to July 2024, has been the hottest on record for its respective month since record-keeping began.
In its latest monthly bulletin, C3S indicates that 2024 may surpass 2023 as the hottest year on record. This rise in temperatures has been attributed to human-induced climate change and the natural El Niño weather phenomenon, which have both driven temperatures to unprecedented levels.
What Does Extreme Heat Do To The Human Body?
As temperatures soar to dangerous levels, the human body’s regulatory mechanisms work overtime to maintain a core temperature close to 37°C (98.6°F). However, when exposed to extreme heat, these mechanisms can be overwhelmed and specific symptoms begin to manifest: heavy sweating, weakness, and dizziness, which can occur when the body struggles to regulate its internal temperature.
When humidity is high, sweat evaporates more slowly, which impedes the body’s natural ability to cool down efficiently, making the perceived temperature feel hotter than the actual air temperature, thereby exacerbating the impact of heat on the body.
As temperature and humidity soar, the brain struggles to process information, leading to impaired judgment which can lead to accidents and potential injuries. The skin, responsible for cooling the body, can fail to evaporate sweat effectively in high humidity, causing heat stroke. The cardiovascular system is strained as more blood is trapped in the skin, increasing the risk of heart attacks.
Breathing hot, humid air can exacerbate respiratory conditions like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma. Dehydration takes a toll on the kidneys, potentially leading to kidney failure or electrolyte imbalances.
Experts warn that as climate change intensifies, mitigating the health impacts of extreme heat will become increasingly critical. In extreme cases, it progresses to heat stroke, a life-threatening condition marked by confusion, rapid heartbeat, and even unconsciousness.
Heat stroke requires immediate medical intervention to prevent long-term damage or fatality and of course poses a real risk to athletes pushing their bodies to the limits in Olympic competition.
If we factor in the extreme competitive drive of athletes, which can often override their judgment when it comes to their own safety, it becomes easier to understand why Olympic and world-class athletes are increasingly weighing up a balancing act between competitive spirit and personal safety
Athletes Experience of Extreme Heat
British marathon swimmer Amber Keegan has spoken out about the impact of extreme heat creating a “nasty cocktail” of threats in her sport, an outdoor event. The physical demands of marathon swimming are already intense but the added stress of extreme heat that swimmers face can increase cramping, fatigue, and vomiting. All of which can deplete precious energy but also diminish mental clarity. Which if you are a marathon swimmer presents the possibility, of amongst other things, drowning.
Meanwhile, the account from Yusuke Suzuki, a Japanese race walker and 2019 World Champion, brings to light the long-term impacts of competing in excessive heat. Suzuki’s distressing experience, not at an Olympic Games but the Doha World Championships, where he suffered symptoms of severe dehydration and heatstroke due to extreme heat, including an elevated heart rate and gastrointestinal distress were not easy to walk away from.
Despite winning the race, the long-term effects were devastating; Suzuki struggled with overtraining syndrome, marked by chronic fatigue and muscle pain, which eventually forced him to withdraw from the Tokyo Olympics and significantly disrupted his career. His story is a chilling reminder of the prolonged recovery and lasting health issues athletes can face at the hands of extreme heat.
At the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, athletes also struggled with blistering heat and humidity, with temperatures soaring above 34℃ (93.2℉) on many days, with humidity approaching 70 percent. Live reports from Tokyo described scenes in which many athletes vomited and fainted at the finish line, needed wheelchairs to leave the field, and said they had real fears of losing their lives during the race.
One of the most infamous scenes as a result of the heatwave came from a tennis match at the Ariake Tennis Park in Tokyo, where the heat index reached a shocking 37℃ (99℉), which led Russian tennis star Daniil Medvedev to shout to the chair umpire mid-match that “I can finish the match but I can die. If I die, are you going to be responsible?” Even after winning the game, Medvedev said that he hadn’t been able to breathe, felt “darkness” in his eyes and “was ready to just fall down on the court” due to the extreme heat and humidity during the match.
In order to more accurately understand the effects of hot weather on athletes, the Ring of Fire report uses a heat stress index called the Wet-Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT) to measure the combined effects of temperature, humidity, wind speed and solar radiation on the human body.
While the original study generally concluded that the WBGT is only a threat to the human body when it reaches 35°C (95°F), a more recent study from 2022 disproves this; according to this study, as soon as the WBGT reaches 31°C (88°F), even the most young and healthy Olympic athletes are no longer able to regulate their own body temperatures, which increases the risk of heat-related illnesses such as sunburn, heat cramps, heat stroke, heat cramps, exhaustion and even heat stroke.
“Extreme temperatures, as witnessed during the Tokyo Olympics and other major events, severely impact athlete performance and safety. The body’s ability to regulate temperature is compromised, leading to risks such as heat exhaustion and heat stroke.”
To calculate what combination of temperature, humidity and wind would generate a specific WBGT you can use this calculator.
How Worried Are Athletes About Climate Change Impacting Them?
In 2023, a World Athletics survey revealed climate change is a growing concern among athletes, with 75% reporting negative impacts on their health and performance due to climate change—a significant increase from previous years. What is more, 90% of surveyed athletes believe World Athletics must play a crucial role in promoting a sustainable future, as extreme weather events become more frequent and severe.
To help kick start that ambition a group of athletes from across the globe, playing in different sports and governing bodies, have organized a nonprofit group called “EcoAhletes” to use the Paris Games as their platform to shine a light on the need for urgent action to tackle climate change. To achieve their goal of educating more people in sports to be wary of the climate crisis, EcoAthletes provides its members with these resources.
According to their website, these include mentoring, community outreach, and connecting athletes with climate-active brands for potential endorsement deals. In their most recent statement, they have implored the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to reconsider sponsorship deals from major gasoline vehicle manufacturer Toyota, and asked Coca-cola and Pepsi to ramp up reusable packaging for all participants of the Olympic Games. Although the 2024 Paris Olympics will be the largest sporting event ever to use reusable packaged drinks, a report by French newspaper Le Monde suggests that 40% of drinks will still be in plastic bottles.
A recent study reveals that 56 brands, primarily led by The Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo, contribute to over 50% of the world’s plastic pollution, with 400 million tons of plastic waste produced annually. Plastic production contributes annually to 5.3% of global greenhouse gasses, (GHG) which is predicted, by conservative estimates, to triple by 2050. Some reports predict plastic GHGs could contribute even more, reaching 20 – 30%, of all GHGs globally.
Can the Winter Olympics Survive?
If the issue facing the Summer Olympics is how to prevent rising temperatures from affecting the safety of athletes, the Winter Olympics faces an existential crisis. Can it find a venue, anywhere in the world, with enough snow to host it?
This is not hyperbole. A 2014 paper comprehensively analyzed historical weather data, climate models, and future projections and came to a startling conclusion: If global greenhouse gas emissions continue at their current rate, only 10 of the 21 former Winter Games hosts will be able to reliably host the Games by mid-century.
Many traditional venues for these games, such as Palisades Tahoe (1960), Grenoble (1968), and Sochi (2014), are becoming unsuitable due to decreasing snowfall by the 2050s; if carbon emissions continue at the rate they are now then only one location out the the 21 historical Winter Games venues, Sapporo (1972) in Japan, can be depended on to do so again by the 2080s. While advanced snowmaking technology can mitigate some of these issues, competitors nearly universally loathe this ‘solution’ as it cannot fully replicate real snow and of course it takes energy to produce.
It Is Not Just Olympic Athletes At Risk From Climate Change
The impact of the increasing heat index is not an Olympic only issue. Anyone watching the 2024 COPA America or the Euros cannot have failed to notice the extreme heat soccer teams were playing in, with their shirts drenched in sweat, often taking water breaks and players looking fatigued. It is also not just professional sports leagues either; across the United States, schools are struggling with maintaining outdoor activities as extreme heat hits the Western Hemisphere.
Climate Change Impacts Sports and Vice Versa
In thinking about these issues, we must recognize that sporting events do not occur in a vacuum; they also contribute greenhouse gas emissions. Previous Olympic Games, such as London 2012 and Rio 2016, produced an average of 3.5 million tons of carbon dioxide, only slightly less than the entire city of San Francisco emits in a year.
There are a variety of ways that major sporting events emit carbon dioxide, from building energy-intensive arenas, to spectator travel, to powering facilities, as well as a lack of proper recycling of plastic and food waste, all of these factors contribute to the large carbon footprint.
Should Sports Divest From Big Oil?
Is it time for a reevaluation of energy sponsorships within sports, as many of them are also major polluters. As the Rings of Fire report has pointed out, it remains an uncomfortable truth that fossil fuels are the primary drivers of global warming, responsible for nearly 80 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, yet they continue to sponsor events that have been dramatically worsened by the rising temperatures.
“The Olympic Games should be a celebration of the very best of humanity—but the Paris Games are celebrating those companies condemning humanity to more heat, drought, and rising seas.”