Sydney (AFP)
Sebastian Coe, President of the British International Association of Athletics Federations, said that long-distance races may be “separated” from the “mother of the games” competitions in major sporting events, due to climate change and the growing concerns regarding the health of the participants, in light of the high temperatures.
The Summer Olympics and the World Championships in Athletics are usually held in July and August, but Coe said the high temperatures are increasingly causing problems for endurance athletes.
Many athletes at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics struggled with the heat and humidity.
The organizers moved race walks and marathons 800 kilometers north of Tokyo, to Sapporo, with the aim of competing in cooler weather, but this did not materialize, given the wave of hot weather that the northern region of Hokkaido faced.
“This is a very important question, because we now live in a rapidly changing world, and climate change affects many things that we do,” Coe said on the eve of the World Cross Country Championships in Australia.
He continued, “I think we have to look at the calendar differently in the coming years. I don’t see how any of the (temperature) challenges will be resolved in the foreseeable future.”
He gave an example of the experiences of American athletics several years ago in Oregon, when the 5,000-meter and 10,000-meter races were reprogrammed, due to the high temperature in June, to a more moderate period.
“So I think we’re going to spend a lot of time thinking regarding what the calendar will look like and maybe, decoupling some of the toughest endurance races from our world championships in the summer months,” Coe continued.
