The International Working Group (IWG) on Women and Sport has today launched the Anita White Fund (AWF) to support female leaders in sport around […]
On November 15, the IF Forum will gather an impressive line-up of Sustainability experts which will discuss and share their knowledge around various aspects of this fundamental topic. Speakers include Maris Sallois-Dembreville, IOC Director, Corporate and Sustainable Development, Benjamin Lévêque, Head of Biodiversity and Climate, Paris 2024, Reto Knutti Professor of Climate Physics, ETH Zurich, and many more.
Soon it will be 12 months since the World Floorball Championships 2022 took place in Switzerland. In addition to being a very successful event in terms […]
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has announced the winners of the inaugural Climate Action Awards, recognising the athletes, International Federations (IFs) and National Olympic Committees […]
On the International Day for Peace, Auvita Rapilla, IOC Member and Chair of the Olympism365 Commission, discusses how the Olympism365 strategy can support the global Sustainable Development […]
Paris 2024 is reinventing the recipe for sports event catering as it prepares to serve 13 million meals and snacks with a promise to […]
Heat stress from the environment can be detrimental to athletes’ health and performance.
No research, however, has explored how elite athletes conceptualize and experience heatwaves and climate change. Utilizing a qualitative approach, this study examined elite athletes’ perceptions, experiences, and responses to extreme heat in relation to climate change and explored the use of their platforms for climate activism.
Fourteen elite athletes from the United Kingdom, Australia, the United States, Sweden, and Canada, who represented 10 different sports including race walking, netball, and cricket were recruited using snowball sampling. Data were collected using semistructured interviews.
Thematic analysis revealed four broad themes. The first theme reflected uncertainty surrounding the causes of heatwaves and the impact of heat on athlete health and performance. The second theme reflected care and concern for sport and society, including concern for the well-being of athletes and spectators, the impact of heat on facilities and participation at the grassroots level, and how the nature of sport may change in the future.
The third theme referred to the implications of heatwave experience on athlete health and performance, and how experience affected individual and organizational preparedness. The fourth theme referred to enablers and barriers to successful climate change communication.
This study contributes to the sport ecology literature by introducing the subjective heat experiences of elite athletes. Educating athletes and event organizers about the impacts of heat on sport participation is imperative to increase awareness and, it is hoped, to limit illness for those training and competing.
Click here to read the full study
Celebrating those in the Olympic Movement who are taking tangible steps to tackle the climate crisis, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has announced the […]
Teams at Euro 2024 will be expected to travel to group-stage matches by coach or train instead of flying, to reduce their carbon impact. […]
While it’d be a stretch to call snowboarding the main cause of global warming, the truth is that we haven’t actually measured its carbon […]