Running News Daily

Report says that Japan's heat will impair Olympic athletes' performance

The impact of climate change will likely lead to "impaired" performances at the Tokyo Olympics, according to a report backed by leading athletes.

In the report, titled Rings of Fire, it is argued that summer heatwaves in Tokyo during the past three years indicate that conditions will be tough.

Concerns over heat have caused the marathon to be moved from Tokyo.

Professor Mike Tipton said he expects Tokyo to be the most "thermally stressful Olympics" of recent times.

The University of Portsmouth professor helped to produce the report, which was backed by athletes, the British Association for Sustainability in Sport (Basis) and scientists from the Priestley International Centre for Climate at Leeds University.

He told BBC Sport: "The take-home message is you've probably got to move the Olympics to a different time of the year rather than a different geographical location or time of the day and I think that's something, going forward, the International Olympic Committee will have to start considering.

"I would be fairly confident to say that performances will be impaired across a lot of sports. The sport as a spectacle will be impaired in terms of the performance level of the people who are doing it."

Mara Yamauchi, who competed in the marathon for Britain at the 2008 and 2012 Olympics, backed the report.