If I were to ever run another marathon, I doubt I would choose to do it at night. However, due to extreme heat conditions, several renowned global running events, including the world championships in Doha, are having to reschedule their races. Midnight long-distance running is one dramatic example mentioned by sports ecologist Madeleine Orr in her new book, Warming Up: How Climate Change is Changing Sport. She discusses how elite and professional sports are being impacted by environmental shifts and suggests how the global sports community can respond. The book’s publication is timely. May 2024 was recorded as the hottest May globally, with average surface air temperatures 0.65 degrees Celsius above the 1991-2020 average. It was also the twelfth consecutive month with a record-high average temperature for that respective month. This trend of breaking records is not what the world needs.
Meanwhile, millions of sports fans are enjoying a bustling season of events, including the Euro 2024 football tournament in Germany, the Wimbledon tennis championships, the Paris Olympics, and the Tour de France cycling race. Elsewhere, there’s the Copa America football championship, the Major League Baseball All-Star Game, the US Tennis Open in New York City, the Women’s Football World Cup in Colombia, and the Rugby Championship in Australia. These competitions feature top-tier athletic performances and draw in billions of spectators, a number expected to grow. All of these sporting events are experiencing some impact from climate conditions. This year, for instance, football games in the UK faced heavy rainfall and flooding, while US tennis players had to cope with sweltering heat. The Tour de France encountered melting road surfaces, prompting route adjustments for safety when temperatures soared during La Route d’Occitanie in southern France in July 2022.
Even if the tournaments do not account for extreme weather this year, athletes’ preparations likely have. For instance, the clothing worn by athletes is evolving. Designers, previously focused on creating agile and performance-enhancing apparel, are now developing garments that wick sweat and help regulate body temperature during activities like running, cycling, and football amid peak temperatures. In her book, Orr illustrates various unusual ways in which sports are being affected by climate change. For example, there is a rise in alcoholism among ski slope staff due to snow melting and shortening ski seasons, reducing training time and leading staff to drink. In golf, every new course design incorporates flood control measures. Plastic pollution is also becoming an obstacle in Olympic water sports. At the 2016 Olympics, sailors had to navigate around trash in the sea off the Rio de Janeiro coastline in their pursuit of gold.
The title of the book hints at both an athlete’s need to warm up and our planet’s warming climate, and it offers hope that the world of sports is beginning to embrace the need for change. Like the young amateur footballers I work with to make grassroots clubs more sustainable, elite athletes now want to contribute to this cause. Many are in a strong position to make a stand and initiate changes that could draw global attention. A leading coach at the renowned US Oregon athletics training camp has prohibited staff from using terms like “unprecedented” and “natural disaster” when apologizing for race cancellations, pointing out that there’s nothing natural about the climate crisis. These issues are now common and undeniably human-induced. Orr presents numerous engaging stories from international competitive sports that are facing environmental challenges and adapting to them. It’s now difficult to imagine any sport that isn’t confronted with the need to adapt to extreme weather, either presently or in the future. Most sports will require change in some capacity.
Orr’s book emphasizes that the situation is critical and won’t improve without significant effort. This effort must involve everyone, from the global athletic elite to fans in the stands. Her final chapter provides a comprehensive to-do list for sports, exceeding the recent goals outlined by the United Nations’ environment program in its handbook Sports for Nature: Setting a Baseline. Her proposals make the concept of sustainable development in sports relatable, with people-focused approaches that prioritize the well-being and fairness of participants, protecting athletes, staff, and fans from extreme conditions, and creating incentives for greener practices to ensure all parties in the sports industry are aware of and striving to reduce their environmental impact. I have read many books regarding the hazards of climate change. Most follow a similar format: they tell a personal story, explain the science, provide hope and solutions, and then conclude that human nature will likely lead us to resolve the issue at the last moment.