Of all the extraordinary circumstances faced by those competing at this year’s Olympics, the one that could have the most direct impact on athletic performance is the weather.
In the run-up to the Tokyo Olympics, much of the public’s attention has been on the pandemic that has pushed the Games back by a year and resulted in spectators being barred from events. However, extreme summer temperatures are among the top concerns for Olympic athletes and their trainers, who have had to find some creative ways to prepare.
The summer months in Tokyo can be so hot that the 1964 Summer Games there were held in October. With this year’s events forging ahead this month, forecasters have predicted these could be the hottest Olympics to date, with temperatures reaching as high as the mid-30s Celsius.
For the Canadian women’s eight rowing team, training to compete in that kind of heat has meant moving indoors, into a sweltering sports dome at the Canadian Sport Institute Pacific in Victoria, B.C. On an otherwise cool summer day, team pathologist Wendy Pethick cranked up a huge heater, helping push the dome’s indoor temperature up to around 35 C.
In order to prepare for the extreme heat expected in Tokyo, the Canadian women’s eight rowing team has been training in an ‘erg dome’ in Victoria, B.C., that’s heated to 35 C. (Dan Batchelor)
“The whole goal for heat acclimation is to try to impose a thermal stress for a given period of time,” said Pethick, with the intent of pushing up the athletes’ baseline core temperatures by about a degree, to a maximum of 38.5 C.
“Because we don’t have the temperatures here in Canada,” Pethick said, doing this kind of training ahead of the games can help the athletes’ bodies learn to deal with that kind of heat and “gives them a little bit of an advantage.”
The results look deeply uncomfortable. As the rowers grind out a gruelling 90-minute workout on rowing machines and stationary bikes, sweat slides off their bodies and splashes into pools on the floor beneath them. Pop music is pumped loudly on speakers to keep morale up.
Team member Madison Mailey said she and her teammates generally drink “around three to four litres” of water during a session. They’re all weighed before and after, so they know how much fluid they lose.
“It’s quite gross to think about your body sweating out three to four litres of water. But it’s real,” she said.
Members of Canada’s women’s eight rowing team lose about three to four litres of sweat during a 90-minute heat training session. (Dan Batchelor)
Since individuals deal slightly differently with heat, Pethick and her colleagues move around the room, checking in with each athlete to gauge their condition.
One of the tools they employ is a tiny thermometer in the form of a pill. The athletes are asked to swallow it a few hours in advance of their training session, and it transmits data about their internal body temperature.
“As soon as the athletes get to 38.5 [Celsius], we just try to maintain that for as much of the session as we possibly can. And we know from the literature and from the research that by applying that amount of thermal stress, we’re going to get full adaptation,” Pethick said.
High-level athletes like the women’s eight rowing team have “very well-developed sweat mechanisms,” she said. “And heat acclimation augments that process.”
The pill also helps ensure each athlete’s safety during training.
“If we have an athlete that heats up really quickly, then we know that we can back off on the work that they’re doing so that we don’t overcook them,” she said.
Olympic rower Madison Mailey holds up a heat-monitoring pill that she ingests in order to help trainers track her internal body temperature during training. (Courtesy Wendy Pethick)
While the actual rowing competitions themselves only last around six minutes, Pethick says, the athletes are working at maximum capacity. That means that while dehydration is less of a concern during a race, they can still overheat.
“The real difficulty is going to be the humidity,” Pethick said. “What that does is it effectively shuts down our most effective heat loss avenue, which is evaporation of sweat.”
When the body can’t thermo-regulate, she says, “you get into things like heat stroke and heat exhaustion, which can be very serious.”
Racing in a Laser Radial dinghy means Sailor Sarah Douglas not only has to contend with the heat in the air, but also from splashing water, which she says could reach as high as 28 C in Tokyo.
Twice a week for around 20 to 40 minutes, she has been training on an exercise bike in a heat chamber at the Canadian Sport Institute Ontario in Toronto. Occasionally, she has posted videos of the sweaty outcome to social media.
“It’s feeling like an oven,” she said in a selfie video taken inside the chamber, where the temperature gauge read 33.6 C, with 65 per cent humidity.
WATCH | Canadian sailor Sarah Douglas shows what an Olympic training session in a heat chamber is like:
Canadian Olympic sailor Sarah Douglas has been exercising in a heat chamber in Toronto, with temperatures in the mid-30s Celsius, in order to prepare herself to compete in the extreme heat expected in Tokyo. (Video courtesy Sarah Douglas) 0:17
Afterward, she wrings out her soaking wet shirt over a sink. “OK, this is how hot it is,” she said, as sweat pours out.
Discomfort is something athletes are used to and train for, but high heat can be especially dangerous for those competing outdoors for long periods of time. That’s why the International Olympic Committee (IOC) moved distance races, such as the marathons, to Sapporo, around 800 km north of Tokyo. Temperatures there are expected to be a few degrees cooler, but still hot.
Before heading there, Canadian marathon runner Malindi Elmore has been training outside in the midday heat in her hometown of Kelowna, B.C. The goal is to acclimatize, but she says the challenge for runners can be as much about training the mind as it is physical.
“It’s in our minds as athletes [that] we want to always do things at our very best,” she said. “But the heat is legitimately a factor, and we need to back off 10 or 15 seconds a kilometre to adjust for the pace.”
Elmore says the overall pace of a race will “naturally adjust” when it’s hot. She says those runners who don’t will “pay a really heavy price.”
Brent Lakatos, a Canadian wheelchair racer, will also be competing outdoors in Japan in the Paralympics. He normally lives with his wife in the United Kingdom, which doesn’t have the kind of heat he needs in order to prepare to compete in the sunshine in Japan. So he has been training in Spain in order to acclimatize.
Upon his return to the U.K. before heading to the Games, he said, he’ll continue his training inside a do-it-yourself heat chamber in his garage.
“I’m going to be getting a humidifier that grocery stores use — so, a fairly strong one — and setting that up inside my garage along with a heater,” he said.
Canadian Brent Lakatos, a seven-time Paralympic medalist, plans to train for Tokyo in a do-it-yourself heat chamber in his garage. (John Sibley/Pool/Getty Images)
Wendy Pethick says Paralympians sometimes require highly individualized training plans for heat mitigation. For instance, athletes with spinal cord injuries may have a diminished capacity to sweat, she says.
“And so for those athletes, we’ve looked at a number of different ways for cooling.”
They include vests filled with ice that can be worn before or after a competition, as well as ice slushies that can be ingested to help lower the body’s core temperature.
Pethick says she was “a little bit” surprised by the choice of Tokyo in mid-summer for these Games. But she added that, “for any Summer Olympics on any given day, it could be temperature extremes. And so I think athletes and coaches need to be prepared for that.”
It’s a lesson summer athletes will likely need to heed into the future, as rising temperatures mean Summer Games could be increasingly hot in many parts of the world. Tokyo, in so many ways, is a testing ground pushing athletes to adapt.
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CALGARY – Ryan Lomberg and Brayden Pachal each had a goal and assist on Saturday night to lead the Calgary Flames to a 4-2 victory over the Vancouver Canucks in NHL pre-season action.
Blake Coleman and Adam Klapka also scored for Calgary, which is 4-0-1 through five games.
Jonathan Lekkerimaki and Aatu Ratyu were the marksmen for Vancouver, which is 2-2 in exhibition play.
Dan Vladar, who stopped 17 of 19 shots in 40 minutes of action, got the win. Devin Cooley made nine stops in relief.
Artus Silovs, beaten four times on 24 shots, gave way to Nikita Tolopilo to start the third. Tolopilo had eight saves.
Calgary opened the scoring at 4:23 when Pachal’s rising wrist shot from the blue line through a maze of bodies eluded Silovs, who never saw it.
The Flames surged in front 2-0 three minutes later when Lomberg corralled a MacKenzie Weegar rebound in the slot and fired a shot just inside the goalpost.
Lomberg, 29, who broke into the NHL as a Flame in 2017-18, re-signed in the off-season in Calgary as a free agent after four years with the Florida Panthers, which was capped off by winning the Stanley Cup.
Vancouver got on the scoreboard at 8:35 of the second on a fortuitous bounce.
Lekkerimaki’s shot from the slot deflected off Flames defenceman Artem Grushnikov, went high into the air, and with seemingly nobody aware of where the puck went, it toppled over Vladar and landed in the Calgary net.
Since being drafted by Vancouver in the first round, in 2022, Lekkerimaki has spent the past two seasons in his native Sweden.
This will be the 20-year-old’s first season in North America and with three points (1 goal, 2 assists) in three games in the pre-season, he’s making a push for a job with the Canucks.
One of the players he is competing against is Raty, who after Calgary had taken a 3-1 lead, again got the Canucks back within one on a perfect shot after being set up on a 2-on-1 by Conor Garland.
Raty, a second-round pick in 2021, was acquired from the New York Islanders in the Bo Horvat trade. He’s spent most of the past two seasons in the AHL.
The Flames restored their two-goal cushion later in the second with Klapka firing a shot past Silovs for his third goal in as many pre-season games.
Klapka, who stands 6-foot-8, is looking to make the team’s fourth line. The 24-year-old has shown some offensive pop with three goals in as many pre-season games.
His physicality was also on display Saturday, throwing an open-ice hit in the first period on Nils Aman that sent the Canucks forward flying. In the third, a heavy hit on Akito Hirose send the defenceman careening into the sideboards. Hirose had to be helped off the ice.
UNEXPECTED OFFENCE
Known more for his physicality, Pachal has never had a multi-point game in his 62 career NHL regular-season games. The 24-year-old was in his fifth season with the Vegas Golden Knights organization when he was claimed off waivers by Calgary last February.
HUBERDEAU-MANTHA COMBO
Left-winger Jonathan Huberdeau played in his second pre-season game for Calgary and has been the case throughout camp, the right-winger was veteran Anthony Mantha, who the Flames signed to a one-year deal as a free agent. On this night, Yegor Sharangovich was at centre. In the first game, the two were centred by Martin Pospisil.
UP NEXT
Canucks: Visit the Edmonton Oilers on Monday.
Flames: Host the Seattle Kraken on Monday.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 28, 2024.
EDMONTON – When the key to a win is work ethic, it is not surprising to see Mattias Ekholm rise to the occasion.
Ekholm had a goal and two assists as the Edmonton Oilers snapped a three-game skid with a 5-4 victory over the Seattle Kraken on Saturday.
Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Noah Philp, Vasily Podkolzin and Raphael Lavoie also scored for the Oilers, who improved to 2-3 in NHL pre-season play.
“They are a hard-working team, no matter who they have in the lineup, so we expected that,” said Oilers forward Derek Ryan, who picked up a couple of assists.
“There were points in the game where we were kind of matching that intensity and work ethic and things were going well for us. We let the work ethic dip a little bit and then the game gets away from us. It is a good message to the guys who were playing and the whole group that it starts with work.”
Jacob Melanson, Eduard Sale, John Hayden and Ben Meyers responded for the Kraken, who fell to 1-3 in exhibition action.
“I thought we were getting up the ice well, playing fast, playing north,” said Meyers. “I think we probably just gave up a little bit too much to win that game, but I thought offensively we played pretty well and we had our chance.”
The Oilers started the scoring just over three minutes into the opening period as both defenders tried to cover Connor McDavid on a two-on-one, but he made a nice backhand pass back to Nugent-Hopkins, who beat Kraken goalie Philipp Grubauer upstairs blocker side.
Seattle tied the game nine minutes into the first after Oilers goalie Calvin Pickard made a couple of saves in tight before Melanson was able to poke it in from the crease.
Pickard left the game soon afterwards after teammate Noah Philp got angled into his own netminder, hitting him in the head. Pickard did not return to the game.
Olivier Rodrigue replaced Pickard in the Edmonton net and surrendered a power-play goal with six minutes to play in the first as Ryan Winterton lifted a deft pass over a defender across to Sale for the goal.
Edmonton knotted the game with 2:43 remaining in the first frame as Ekholm spotted Philp driving the net and completed a long saucer pass through a couple Kraken players to allow him to wrist it home.
Seattle made it 3-2 5:32 into the second period after Rodrigue attempted to direct a puck away from the net, only to have it hit Hayden and carom into his net.
With two minutes left in the middle period, the Kraken added to their lead as Meyers elected to shoot on a two-on-one opportunity, beating the Oilers’ goalie upstairs.
Edmonton got that goal back just 26 seconds later as Derek Ryan threaded the needle to a trailing Ekholm and he beat Grubauer to make it 4-3.
The Oilers tied the game six minutes into the third on a short-handed tally as Ryan made a great play to draw the defenders his way before sending it over to Podkolzin for the easy tap-in.
Edmonton avoided overtime with 2:53 remaining in the final frame as Lavoie battled hard to retrieve the puck before swinging out front and sending a shot through Grubauer’s legs.
Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch has been impressed with Lavoie’s skills as a sniper.
“He’s got good hands and an even better shot,” he said. “He showed great skill on that goal.”
NOTES
The Oilers still had 41 players in camp — with four goalies, 13 defencemen and 24 forwards. … Seattle was down to 37 players at camp — 33 skaters and four goalies — after cutting eight players before Friday’s contest against Vancouver. … Edmonton had both of the players in camp who are on PTOs in the lineup on Saturday, forward Mike Hoffman and defenceman Travis Dermott. … Grubauer made his first appearance since last Sunday’s 6-1 loss to Calgary, during which he allowed four goals on 19 shots.
UP NEXT
Kraken: Visit the Calgary Flames on Monday.
Oilers: Host the Vancouver Canucks on Monday.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 28, 2024.
CHICAGO (AP) — Jonathan Dean scored his first Major League Soccer goal in the 84th minute for the Chicago Fire on Saturday night in a 1-1 draw with Toronto FC.
Ariel Lassiter cut back to evade a defender and the played an arcing ball from the left corner of the area to the back post, where a charging Dean tapped in a one-touch finish from point-blank range to cap the scoring.
Prince Owusu converted from the penalty spot in first-half stoppage time to give Toronto (11-17-4) a 1-0 lead at halftime.
Chicago (7-16-9) has just one win and four losses in its last six games.
