The thermometer read 95 degrees, but on the beach volleyball court, with all that bright white sand, the wind chill was 102. The players took advantage of a brief break to towel off and drink water.
“It was extremely hot,” said Carolina Solberg Salgado. “I was trying not to think about how much my body hurt.” [uncomfortable] Was.”
Paris 2024 Summer Olympics
As she and her Brazilian teammate resumed their match against a Lithuanian duo, cheers erupted in one corner of the Eiffel Tower Stadium: a worker there had extended a rubber hose into the stands and was spraying the fans.
“It was great,” said Toronto’s Sean McKinnon. “He hit the poor girl next to us in the face really hard, but I think she appreciated it.”
The weather has been challenging during the first week of these 2024 Summer Olympics, with conditions varying from one extreme to another.
A storm blew through during the opening ceremony, drenching the city with an inch of rain and staying there long enough to postpone skateboarding practice the next day. Then the heat came.
Researchers worry that Paris represents the latest in an Olympic trend that has winter athletes scrambling to find enough snow and their summer counterparts facing health risks — cramps, vomiting, heat stroke — caused by soaring temperatures.
“We are in a race against time,” wrote Sebastian Coe, a former Olympian and head of the international athletics federation, in a report last month. “As global temperatures continue to rise, climate change should increasingly be seen as an existential threat to sport.”
How do athletes describe the conditions in France so far?
“It was a bit of a disaster,” Irish golfer Shane Lowry said of carrying his team's flag on the soggy opening hole.
After the men's skateboarding qualifying round, with the afternoon finals still to come, American star Jagger Eaton said he thought: “Wow, I'm exhausted.” American cyclist Hannah Roberts had a similar experience on the BMX arena.
Nyjah Huston performs a trick during the street skateboarding preliminaries on Monday as temperatures reached 89 degrees in Paris. On Tuesday, temperatures reached 97 degrees in the city.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
“I was stiflingly hot,” she said. “I felt like a small potato.”
Olympians may not be climate experts or familiar with all the relevant policy arguments surrounding weather trends, but they do have a view from the field.
Skiers and snowboarders have seen firsthand the changes that a 2022 Canadian study predicts could make all but one of the 21 previous Winter Olympics host cities too warm to reliably host downhill races, biathlons and halfpipe competitions by the end of the century. The list includes Palisades Tahoe (formerly Squaw Valley) in California.
“We went to places where there would normally be snow, but… we were jumping in the snow in the pouring rain,” said American aerial skier Winter Vinecki ahead of the Beijing 2022 Games.
Air-conditioned stadiums protect gymnasts and other athletes and spectators at the Summer Games from the elements. But outdoor events remain vulnerable to average temperatures that, over the past century, have risen by about 5 degrees during Olympic months, according to “Rings of Fire,” a report released in June by the British Association for Sustainable Sport and an Australian organization called FrontRunners.
The issue first came to attention three years ago at the Tokyo Games, which experts say were the warmest in history, with daytime highs of around 32°C and humidity reaching nearly 70%.
The women’s marathon was rescheduled for 6 a.m. to take advantage of cooler morning temperatures, and athletes running shorter distances adjusted their warm-ups to give them time to cool down before the races. At the tennis venue, Spain’s Paula Badosa pulled out of the quarterfinals in a wheelchair and Russia’s Daniil Medvedev needed two medical timeouts, telling the chair umpire: “I can finish the match, but I can die.”
Since then, the report says, “notable cases of extreme heat that undermine health and the enjoyment of sporting events have only increased.”
The weather has been a frequent topic of discussion in Paris, as athletes fretted over rain delays at the start of the competition. When the sun returned, the Olympic skate park, built of concrete and shaped like a bowl, turned into a giant frying pan.
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1. A boy walks through a toilet at Roland Garros in Paris on Wednesday. 2. Spectators use fans to cool off while watching Olympic tennis at Roland Garros. 3. A spectator attending the Roland Garros Olympic tennis tournament in Paris on Wednesday tries to keep cool. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
Even water sports may be affected.
Rowers say they tire more quickly in the heat and sailors struggle to stay hydrated while spending up to five hours in their boats. Marathon swimmers must get up in the middle of the night to prepare for open water competitions that move into the early hours of the morning.
Many athletes said they spent a week or more training in hot weather to prepare.
“The weather in Paris is quite unpredictable,” said Serbian tennis player Novak Djokovic after a sweltering match at Roland-Garros. “I was acclimatising to different scenarios.”
When Qatar hosted the 2022 World Cup, officials moved the international soccer tournament from the summer to November or December. Experts say there are other, less drastic options. Events can be held earlier in the day and rules can be changed to shorten matches or include more water breaks.
British tennis player Jack Draper, meanwhile, said French organisers could do more to help athletes stay hydrated.
“It was quite poor the way they gave [water] “We give bottles to the players,” Draper said after losing to Taylor Fritz of the United States in the men’s singles. “The bottles don’t stay cold. We were drinking hot water in there.”
A fan attending the Roland Garros Olympic tennis tournament in Paris on Wednesday tries to stay cool.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
Another tennis player, American Coco Gauff, mentioned taking an ice bath after her match. Eaton, the skater who won the silver medal, revealed that her strategy consisted of having two towels at hand and “just drinking” drinks.
The weather has been equally harsh for spectators.
On Friday evening, they gathered in the rain for hours during the opening ceremony. On Tuesday afternoon, at the beach volleyball stadium, they huddled around the sprinklers or lay on the grass behind the stands.
“I watched one game and then sat in the shade during another game,” said Randi Fentress of Fort Worth. “Now I’ll go back in.”
The scattered clouds that formed a few hours later made Roland-Garros feel like a sauna. Shortly afterwards, a thunderstorm broke out and spread across the Paris skyline. The forecast predicted a change: more rain.
