Since early 2020, the Tokyo Olympics have been inextricably linked with Covid-19. Even now, three months before the Games are due to begin, it remains unclear whether Australia’s athletes will be vaccinated in time, or, indeed, if the Olympics might be cancelled entirely. But long before the pandemic, another health risk was front of mind for Australian athletes, coaches and sport scientists. In the pursuit of gold, Tokyo’s extreme summer heat will pose just as much of an obstacle as the coronavirus.
When Tokyo last hosted a summer Games, in 1964, they were held in October. For good reason. The average high in July and August hovers around 30C – on warmer days, the temperature can exceed 35C. Each year, hundreds of Japanese people die from heat-related causes and thousands more are hospitalised. Add in the humidity that follows the rainy season and Olympic athletes can expect to swelter throughout the 2021 Games.
“It is like sitting inside one big sauna bath for a solid two months,” wrote Tokyo-based journalist Robert Whiting in the Japan Times in 2014, arguing that holding the Olympics in summer would be dangerous. “The only conceivable places that are worse would be staging the games in, say, Death Valley, California, or the Horn of Africa.”
But the Games are proceeding with a mid-summer time slot, commencing 23 July, due in large part to the preferences of American media companies (who bankroll the International Olympic Committee with vast broadcast fees). Faced with this scorching reality, Australia’s Olympic sports have spent the past two years getting ready to triumph in the heat.
“Heat can have a huge impact on performance,” says Dr Peta Maloney from the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS). “There is good evidence to show that for some sports the heat can have as much as a 10 or 15% impact on performance outcomes. That is huge – that is not just the difference between gold or bronze, but whether they finish at all.”
Maloney is a member of the AIS’s Tokyo Heat Project, which has been working to develop research-informed strategies to minimise the impact of the heat. Australian Olympians will have access to ice baths 24 hours a day, and the AIS is expecting to provide 500 litres of ice-cold slushies to athletes each day. The Heat Project has also been working with sports to provide heat acclimation opportunities in the build-up to Tokyo. “That can be done passively – sitting in a sauna or spa, wearing extra clothes – or actively, such as an athlete training in a heat chamber,” Maloney explains.
While outdoor sports are a particular focus for the Heat Project, Maloney says they are also concerned about “incidental exposure” – in the athlete’s village, or while in transit to a competition venue – impacting performance. “Our goal with this initiative is to ensure that every athlete going to Tokyo is as prepared as possible for the conditions,” she says.
Cycling is one sport particularly vulnerable to the conditions, with road racing and mountain biking both involving long periods in the sun. “The heat is going to be a significant factor – we are planning for the worst,” says Simon Jones, performance director with AusCycling. “We don’t want ‘heat’ to be the main word mentioned in the debrief.”
Australia’s road cycling team undertook numerous reconnaissance trips to Tokyo pre-Covid, and AusCycling is working closely with their athletes to maximise mental and physical preparations. “There is no silver bullet – you have to prepare,” says Jones. “There is a physiological side, but just as importantly there’s a mental side – heat perception and pacing can make a big difference.”
The Paralympics also pose a particular challenge, given the heightened impact of the heat on some para-athletes and an absence of extensive research around effective management strategies for particular impairments. “Some para-athletes have impairments that impact their ability to thermo-regulate,” Maloney says. “For example, an amputee athlete has reduced skin surface to dissipate heat; an athlete with a spinal-cord-injury may have impaired sweating and blood flow responses.” Maloney will be travelling to Tokyo for the Paralympics to work with para-athletes on the ground.
Nikolas Pender, an 18-year-old rower, knows all too well the challenges that await athletes in Tokyo – Pender and his crew competed in the rowing junior world championships in 2019, held in Tokyo Harbour as a test event for the Olympic course.
“It was mid-30s to low 40s every day – really sticky and humid,” Pender says. “Rowers were collapsing at the end of their races – thankfully there were quite a few paramedics on site. It is definitely challenging racing in those conditions. Even just sitting around in that weather is exhausting.”
Domestically-based athletes will be heading to Tokyo from the middle of an Australian winter. Due to Covid-19 restrictions, athletes are only permitted to arrive in Japan five days before their event, which leaves little time to acclimatise. “We came from the middle of a Sydney winter – training in 5C or 6C in the morning,” Pender adds. “It is really hard to make that jump from competing in the middle of winter to the middle of summer.”
But AusCycling head honcho Jones remains confident that the work being done by his athletes and staff will leave them well-placed to succeed in the Tokyo heat. “It all comes down to practice – they need to have been in that situation before,” he says. “The more you practice, the luckier you get.”