From melting tracks to rising alcoholism – how sport is being forced to adapt to the effects of climate change

In her new book, sports ecologist Madeleine Orr shows how the world of sport is being impacted by climate change in unbelievable ways.

In the unlikely event I ever run another marathon, I wouldn’t want to do it at night. But some famous global running events, including the world championships in Doha, are having to reschedule races to avoid participants having to run in extreme heat conditions.

Midnight long-distance running is just one stark example highlighted by sports ecologist Madeleine Orr in her new book, Warming Up: How Climate Change is Changing Sport. Elite and professional sports are being affected by changing environmental issues – and she explains how global sports movements can do something about that.

It’s a timely publication. May 2024 was the warmest May on record around the world, with a global average surface air temperature 0.65°C above the 1991–2020 average. It also marked the 12th consecutive month for which the global average temperature reached a record value for the corresponding month in the previous year.

This is not the sort of record-breaking streak the world needs. And this summer, millions of sports fans are watching an action-packed season of sport from the Euro 2024 football tournament in Germany and the Wimbledon tennis championships to the Paris Olympics and the Tour de France cycling challenge.

Further afield, there’s the Copa America South American football championship, major league baseball’s All-Star Game and the US tennis open in New York City, the women’s football world cup in Colombia and the rugby championship in Australia.

These competitions showcase top-tier athletic performances, attracting billions of viewers numbers that are predicted to rise. And all of these sporting events are being affected by climate in some way.

Already this year, football in the UK has been hit by heavy rainfall and flooding, while tennis players in the US have had to endure blistering temperatures. The Tour de France, meanwhile, was marred by melting road surfaces, and routes were cut short for rider safety as temperatures in La Route d'Occitanie in southern France soared in July 2022.

If the tournaments themselves don’t provide concessions for extreme weather this year, the athletes’ preparations almost certainly already have. For example, the kits that sports men and women wear are changing.

It was once the domain of the designer to create clothing that was agile and give competitors the edge, now they are tasked with creating garments that wick sweat away and keep body heat down in competitions such as running, cycling and football, as temperatures peak.

In her book, Orr shows how the world of sport is being affected by climate change in bizarre and unusual ways. For example, alcoholism has increased among staff working on ski slopes, because a warming planet is causing snow to melt and ski seasons to end sooner. The resulting reduction in ski training times is literally driving staff to drink.

In golf, course designers are now factoring in flood control measures as part of designing the greens. Plastic pollution is even becoming part of the obstacle course for Olympic water sports. In the 2016 Olympics, sailors had to learn to dodge trash in the sea off the Rio De Janeiro coastline in their bid for gold.

Sport is shifting

With a title that hints at an athletes’ need to warm-up and our planet’s warming climate, this book also gives me hope that the world of sport is collectively warming up to the idea that things have to change. Like the young amateur footballers I work with to make grassroots clubs more sustainable, the elites now want to do their bit.

Many are in a far better position to take a stand and make changes that will hopefully see the world take notice. One top coach at the famous US Oregon athletics training camp is banning staff from issuing press releases with phrases such as “unprecedented” and “natural disaster” when apologising for race cancellations. Instead, he highlights that there’s nothing natural about the climate crisis. Such problems are now commonplace and very much human-made.

Orr showcases lots of captivating stories from competitive sports around the world that are facing environmental challenges and finding ways to adapt accordingly. It is now hard to imagine any sport in the world that isn’t facing the prospect of making serious concessions to extreme weather, either now or in the future. Most sports will need to make changes in some way.

Orr’s book drives home the message that the problem is already grave and won’t improve without serious effort. This needs to include everyone from the global athletic elite right down to the hotdog-munching, coke-guzzling fans in the stands. Her concluding chapter outlines a to-do list for sport that goes way beyond the recent targets set out by the United Nations’ environment programme inits handbook Sports for Nature: Setting a Baseline.

Her ideas really humanise the idea of sustainable development in sport, with people-centred approaches that prioritise the wellbeing and equality of participants, to protect athletes, staff, and fans from extreme heat and other climate hazards and creating incentives for greener practices to ensure that all stakeholders in the sports industry are aware of, and committed to, reducing their environmental impacts.

I have read dozens of books on the threat of climate change. Most follow a similar formula – they personalise the story, explain the science, provide hope and solutions, then conclude that actually human nature means we’ll probably sort it out at the last minute.

This is no such book. Instead, lots of real life stories illustrate why all is not well in the world of sport. There’s a smattering of hope towards the end, of course, and the practical call to action, but the reader is certainly left with a sense that this our problem, and that we all must change. Perhaps sport, and the global obsession with it, is a good place to start.

Mark Charlton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.