The summer in Tokyo is so hot that the 1964 Summer Olympics were held in October. As this year’s event continues this month, forecasters predict that this may be the hottest Olympic Games so far, with temperatures reaching around 30 degrees Celsius.

For the Canadian women’s eight-man rowing team, training for competitions in this high temperature means moving indoors and entering a sweltering stadium at the Victoria Pacific Institute of Excellence for Sport in British Columbia. On a cool summer day, the team pathologist Wendy Pethick stood up with a giant heater to help raise the indoor temperature of the dome to around 35 degrees Celsius.

“The whole goal of thermal adaptation is to try to apply thermal stress for a given period of time,” Peske said. The goal is to increase the athlete’s baseline core temperature by about 1 degree, up to 38.5 degrees Celsius.

“Because we don’t have such a temperature in Canada,” Peske said. Carrying out this kind of training before the game can help athletes learn to cope with the high temperature and “give them a little advantage.”

The result looks very uncomfortable. When rowers did 90 minutes of hard work out on rowing machines and stationary bicycles, sweat slipped off them and splashed into the pool on the floor under their feet. Pop music is played loudly on speakers to maintain morale.

Team member Madison Mailey (Madison Mailey) said that she and her teammates usually drink “about three to four liters” of water during a training session. They are weighing before and after, so they know how much fluid they have lost.

“Think about your body producing three to four liters of water. It’s disgusting. But it’s true,” she said.

Since everyone handles heat slightly differently, Pethick and her colleagues walked around the room, checking with each athlete to assess their condition.

One of the tools they use is a miniature thermometer in the form of a pill. Athletes are asked to swallow it a few hours before training, and it transmits data about their internal body temperature.

“Once the athlete reaches 38.5 [Celsius], We just try to maintain this as much as possible in the meeting. We know from literature and research that by applying such a large thermal stress, we will get full adaptation,” Pesik said.

She said that high-level athletes like the women’s eight-man rowing team have “very developed perspiration mechanisms.” “The thermal adaptation will enhance this process.”

The pill also helps to ensure the safety of every athlete during training.

She said: “If one of our athletes gets hot very quickly, then we know we can give up the work they are doing so we don’t overcook them.”

Pethick said that although the actual rowing race itself only lasts about 6 minutes, the athletes are working to their fullest capacity. This means that although dehydration is not important during the game, they can still overheat.

“The real difficulty will be humidity,” Pethick said. “The effect of this is to effectively shut down our most effective way of heat dissipation, which is sweat evaporation.”

She said that when the body cannot regulate body temperature, “you will fall into conditions such as heat stroke and heat exhaustion, which can be very serious.”

Driving a laser radial dinghy meant that sailor Sarah Douglas not only had to deal with the heat in the air, but also with splashing water, which she said could be as high as 28 degrees Celsius in Tokyo.

Twice a week, for about 20 to 40 minutes each time, she has been training bicycles in the hot room of the Ontario Institute of Physical Education in Toronto, Canada. Occasionally, she will post videos on social media about the results of her sweating profusely.

“It feels like an oven,” she said in a self-portrait video taken indoors. The thermometer read 33.6 degrees Celsius and the humidity was 65%.

Watch | Canadian sailor Sarah Douglas shows how the Olympic training course in the hot room looks like:

Canadian Olympic sailor Sarah Douglas has been exercising in a hot room in Toronto at around 30 degrees Celsius in order to prepare for the competition in the extreme heat expected in Tokyo. (Video provided by Sarah Douglas) 0:17

After that, she wringed out the drenched shirt on the sink. “Well, that’s how hot it is,” she said, sweat gushing out.

Discomfort is something athletes are used to and training, but high temperatures are especially dangerous for those who spend a long time playing outdoors. This is why the International Olympic Committee (IOC) transferred marathon and other long-distance races to Sapporo, about 800 kilometers north of Tokyo. The temperature there is expected to be a few degrees lower, but it is still hot.

Before going there, Canadian marathon runner Malindi Elmore had been training outdoors in the high noon heat in her hometown of Kelowna, British Columbia. The goal is to adapt to the environment, but she said that the challenge for runners is to exercise their brains as well as their bodies.

“In our hearts as athletes [that] We want to always do things in the best condition,” she said. “But the high temperature is a reasonable factor, and we need to step back 10 or 15 seconds per kilometer to adjust to the speed. “

Elmore said that when the weather is hot, the overall speed of the game “naturally adjusts.” She said those runners who did not do so would “pay a very heavy price.”

Canadian wheelchair racer Brent Lakatos (Brent Lakatos) will also participate in the Paralympic outdoor competitions in Japan. He usually lives in the UK with his wife, where there is not the kind of heat he needs to prepare to play in the Japanese sun. So he has been training in Spain to adapt to the environment.

He said that after returning to the UK before heading to the Olympics, he will continue his training in a do-it-yourself heated room in his garage.

“I’m going to buy a humidifier for the grocery store-so, a pretty powerful one-and put it in my garage with the heater,” he said.

Wendy Pethick said that Paralympic athletes sometimes need highly personalized training programs to relieve calories. For example, athletes with spinal cord injuries may have reduced sweating ability, she said.

“So for these athletes, we have studied many different cooling methods.”

They include ice-filled vests that can be worn before and after a game, and ice mud that can be ingested to help lower the body’s core temperature.

Peske said she was “a little bit” surprised by choosing Tokyo to host these Olympics in midsummer. But she added, “For any Summer Olympics on any given day, extreme temperatures are possible. So I think athletes and coaches need to be prepared for this.”

This is a lesson that summer athletes may need to pay attention to in the future, because rising temperatures mean that the Summer Olympics in many parts of the world may get hotter. In many ways, Tokyo is a testing ground for athletes to adapt.

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