With the Paris Olympics less than a month away, Dr Jessica Mee director of the female heat lab, spoke with Qasa Alom and Sophie Eastough, for an episode of their BBC “The Climate Question” programme titled “How are athletes adapting to extreme heat?”
The 2020 Tokyo Olympics (2021) were one of the most gruelling games in history, with the highest temperature and humidity of any Olympics recorded. Despite deliberate decisions made by the event organisers to change locations of certain events to regions that were anticipated to be slightly cooler, many athletes still experienced heat related illnesses. Tokyo Olympics certainly felt like a bit of a wakeup call to everyone involved to accelerate public health measures to support people to better manage the gruelling heat. In terms of the Paris Games, we certainly do not expect to see the same level of heat stress to that experienced in Tokyo. However, there is potential for it to be a hot Olympic Games, and athlete will certainly be preparing to experience temperatures in excess of 30°C.
On The Climate Question episode, Jessica discusses the severity of untreated heat illnesses and why it is incredibly important to aggressively cool athletes if they display any symptoms. Implementing various cooling procedures will reduce the athletes body temperature quickly, avoiding a serious medical incidence and potential for any lifelong medical complications.
Jessica also discusses the strategies athletes will be using ahead of the Olympic Games to ensure they are adapted to the heat. In addition, Jessica also spoke about some of the potential differences between male and female athletes’ responses to the heat.
As part of the episode Qasa and Sophie also spoke with one of the fastest marathon runners in Britain, Phil Seseman, where he was performing a training session in a state-of-the-art heat chamber. Whilst many British athletes are not accustomed to training in the heat, some athletes from across the world will be regularly exposed to these higher ambient conditions, making Qasa and Sophie’s discussion with Indian’s top triathlete, Pragnya Mohan, a very interesting one to round off the episode.
Watch the full episode here, which will be available for 1 year.