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Everywhere you look in the world of sport now climate change is biting

From major events like the Olympics to your local golf club or junior soccer team being disrupted, the evidence is mounting

Russia's Daniil Medvedev suffered heat exhaustion during the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games men's singles third round tennis match against Italy's Fabio Fognini at the Ariake Tennis Park in Tokyo. Photograph: Giuseppe Cacace/AFP via Getty Images
Russia's Daniil Medvedev suffered heat exhaustion during the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games men's singles third round tennis match against Italy's Fabio Fognini at the Ariake Tennis Park in Tokyo. Photograph: Giuseppe Cacace/AFP via Getty Images
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Denis Walsh
Mon Jan 15 2024 - 06:00

At the Tokyo Olympics three years ago sport and climate change had an unscheduled roadshow.

It wasn’t a provocative conference speech, or a solemn item on the TV news, or a numbers-fuelled, jargon-full report that you know is urgently important but might not be your thing. Instead, sport has a great capacity to put something on a fork, for easy consumption.

So, just in case you weren’t paying attention, the Toyko Games made it easy. In the tennis tournament two players retired in the middle of their matches from heat exhaustion; one of them had to be removed from the court in a wheelchair. In his quarter-final Daniil Medvedev needed two medical timeouts.

“I can finish the match, but I can die,” he told the umpire, offering a deadpan bulletin on his wellbeing. “If I die, are you going to be responsible?”

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Afterwards Medvedev said that he had been unable to breathe, that he felt “darkness” in his eyes, and “was ready to just fall down on the court”.

Novak Djokovic said they were the toughest conditions he had ever encountered.

“You’re constantly dehydrated,” he said, “you feel you have weights on your shoulders, because there’s so much heat and humidity and stagnated air.”

Two endurance events, the marathon and the race walk, were moved 800km north to Hokkaido, which is usually much cooler. That summer, however, it was in the throes of its most severe heatwave for 97 years.

The long distance open water swimming events were held in Tokyo Bay, where the water was described as being “as hot as soup”. The Olympic volunteers were repeatedly warned about heat stroke.

In climate terms, hosting a summer Olympics in Tokyo was a loaded proposition from the beginning. The last time the Games were staged there, in 1964, they were so concerned about the Tokyo summer that the event was held in October.

In 2013, however, the Tokyo bid committee had promised “mild and sunny” weather and the International Olympic Committee didn’t give a fig one way or another.

For one thing, the American TV Networks would be aghast at an autumn Olympics in the middle of the NFL season. TV money matters to the IOC. Let the athletes sizzle.

Tokyo, though, is a climate change phenomenon. The average temperature in the city has climbed by nearly three degrees since the beginning of the last century, which is three times the global average.

When they were awarded the Olympics in 2013, though, really nobody thought that climate change would impact the Games. Climate change was still contested by a loud constituency of sceptics. In Ireland, it hadn’t punched us in the face yet.

A worker stands next to a snow machine making artificial snow outside one of the athletes villages for the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics before the area closed to visitors in Chongli county, Zhangjiakou, Hebei province, northern China. Photograph: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images
A worker stands next to a snow machine making artificial snow outside one of the athletes villages for the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics before the area closed to visitors in Chongli county, Zhangjiakou, Hebei province, northern China. Photograph: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

But everywhere you look in the world of sport now climate change is biting. At the last winter Olympics in Beijing, two years ago, they needed to generate artificial snow. In the history of the event, 19 venues have staged the winter Olympics and it is predicted that by 2050 only 10 of them will be fit to do so again.

The air quality at the 2020 Australian Open tennis tournament was so impacted by wildfires that some players were forced to withdraw from the event.

Last summer, cricket matches in England were played in 40 degrees heat. Five UK racing fixtures were cancelled because of extreme temperatures.

For a long time, sport wasn’t part of this conversation. There were parts of the world where climate change was impacting profoundly on people’s livelihoods and quality of life, and there were times of the year when extreme weather events would dominate the headlines and the news bulletins, but elite professional sport, the stuff that filled our TVs, seemed to be cosseted from all of that upheaval. Anyway, sport didn’t stop.

Now, it’s butting in. It has become intrusive. Noticeable. You might never have stopped to think about climate change, but you can’t help wondering why your local golf course is now closed for three months of the year, or why the local junior soccer team can hardly get a game played in midwinter. Trivial, everyday stuff that sweetens our existence is now interrupted.

The GAA has been sucked in because there aren’t enough days in the year. For decades, the GAA had very little truck with December or January, but in their gridlocked competition calendar every weekend is precious now. So, in a rapidly changing climate, games are being played in weather that was never intended for hurling or football.

The Munster club football final in the middle of December, for example, was played in a sudden storm of wind and rain that arrived an hour before throw-in and squatted for the afternoon in the Gaelic Grounds. October, which is now the prime time for county finals, has turned into the monsoon season.

Castlehaven’s Damien Cahalane celebrates the win over Dingle at the final whistle. The Munster final was in the middle of December at the TUS Gaelic Grounds was played in a storm of wind and rain. Photograph: James Crombie/Inpho
Castlehaven’s Damien Cahalane celebrates the win over Dingle at the final whistle. The Munster final was in the middle of December at the TUS Gaelic Grounds was played in a storm of wind and rain. Photograph: James Crombie/Inpho

Over the next couple of months the GAA expects the National Leagues to be disrupted by intrusive weather and have scheduled a couple of gap weekends to sweep up postponed games. If any spoilsport weather events come along after the second gap weekend the GAA is resigned to the possibility of some leagues not being completed.

Modern sport likes to project a social conscience. The big global sports are more conscious of the optics of climate change. The last football World Cup in Qatar claimed to be “carbon neutral”, even though an investigation by Carbon Market Watch – a non-profit climate watchdog – found significant holes in that assertion. “Greenwashing” is now a sister term for “sportswashing.” Same principles.

The Paris Olympic committee has published ambitious environmental goals for their Games this summer, including their intention to be a “climate positive” event. This has been greeted with a degree of scepticism, and there may be an element of virtue signalling, but at least it is an honourable goal.

The greatest role that sport can play is to hammer home the message: this needs your attention, what can you do?

Dr Russell Seymour, chief executive of the British Association for Sustainable Sport, draws an interesting parallel with the fight against racism and the wider drive for equality, diversity and inclusion – all of which sport has embraced. For its impact on society, climate change is on the same plane.

“The thing that you love [sport],” he says, “the thing that you’re passionate about, is going to be changed by this [climate change].”

If you can’t think about it any other way, think about it that way.

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