‘Tokyo will have to accept IOC plan to move marathon to Hokkaido’

Athletes can now approach 2020 focused on performance, not survival

TOKYO, Oct 17, (RTRS): Tokyo has little choice but to accept an International Olympic Committee (IOC) move to shift the 2020 marathon to a cooler northern island in Japan despite opposition to the plan in the capital, the president of Tokyo 2020 Olympics said on Thursday.

The International Olympic Committee on Wednesday announced a plan to move the marathon and race walking events to Japan’s northern Hokkaido island because of worries about heat in Tokyo next summer.

“If the IOC and the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) support it how can our organising committee tell them no,” Yoshiro Mori told reporters.

Mori’s comments come after Japanese government and Tokyo officials earlier said they want to discuss what they have referred to as an IOC proposal at a coordination commission meeting planned at the end of this month.

Kyodo News reported Japanese officials describing the move as coming “out of the blue”.

“There are still lots of issues to discuss, lots of detailed things we have to work on,” Mori said. The IOC plan “puts those who have been working with us on ways to tackle high temperatures in a difficult spot,” he added.

The Tokyo 2020 organisers had been trying to find ways to keep athletes and spectators cool during hot weather and at a test marathon event in September, deployed tents equipped with mist machines. Sapporo, Hokkaido’s capital, is as much as five to six degrees centigrade cooler than Tokyo in summer where temperatures commonly exceed 30 degrees.

The last time Tokyo hosted the Olympic games the event opened in October when temperatures are lower.

The news that the marathon and walking events at the Tokyo Olympics are set to move to a cooler climate will be welcomed by the majority of athletes, who can now focus on reaching their absolute maximum without fear of a major medical breakdown.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has announced a plan to move the 2020 Games endurance events to Sapporo on the northern island Hokkaido due to concerns about the impact of heat on the scheduled Tokyo course.

Although it has still to be approved by Tokyo 2020 officials, it seems likely to be, meaning athletes will already be starting to revise their training plans.

It is hard enough in normal circumstances for athletes trying to hone their training for the longest endurance races to ensure they peak at just the right time.

Yet when that already gruelling COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado, Oct 17, (AP): Threetime Olympic cyclist Taylor Phinney is retiring from professional racing, ending a career that included 10 world championship medals and a stage win at the Giro d’Italia.

Phinney announced Wednesday that he would ride for his team, EF Education First, for the last time this weekend in Japan.

The 29-year-old Phinney, whose parents, Davis Phinney and Connie Carpenter-Phinney, were Olympic medalists, began his career on the track, where he competed in the individual

training has to be adapted to factor in high temperatures and humidity, the challenge is doubled.

The 50km walk is the longest event on the athletics calendar, with athletes pounding the pavements for over three and a half hours, while everyone is aware of the extremes of exertion the world’s best marathoners go through.

Coaches and scientists have for many years tried to mitigate the impact Yoshiro Mori, President of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics organizing committee,

speaks to the media in Tokyo on Oct 17. (AP) pursuit at the 2008 Beijing Games.

He soon transitioned to the road, where he finished fourth in the road race and time trial at the 2012 London Games. Phinney also competed in the 2016 Rio Olympics, completing a long comeback from a crash at the 2014 national championships that left him with career-threatening injuries.

Phinney won two gold medals in the individual pursuit at the world championships, another gold in the Under-23 time trial and a fourth world gold as part of the BMC Racing Team in the team time trial.

of heat, with specially-designed ultra-light and “high-wicking” fabrics for race kit, ice caps and even ice vests used to cool the body prior to competing. Warm weather training camps have become the norm, while more left-field – and considerably cheaper – methods such as training in a sauna or over-heated gym are also commonly used.

However, as was illustrated in last month’s athletics world championships in Doha, even the best preparations can fail to beat the elements, and the Tokyo course had already been highlighted as having very little shade.

Doha organisers started the marathons and walks around midnight to take advantage of the cooler conditions but it failed spectacularly, with over 40 percent of competitors dropping out of the women’s marathon, some of them in visible distress.

“You see somebody down on the course and it’s just, extremely grounding and scary, that could be you in the next kilometre, the next 500 metres,” Canadian runner Lyndsay Tessier said after the race.

“I’m just really grateful to have finished standing up.”

In last year’s

Commonwealth

Games on Australia’s Gold Coast, Scotsman Callum Hawkins was on course for the biggest win of his career when he collapsed with heatstroke 2km from the finish.

He said he had felt absolutely no ill-effects at the time – something medical professionals are particularly concerned about with elite distance athletes who train themselves to endure such levels of pain and discomfort that they go far beyond the “red zone” that would bring lesser mortals to a halt when their bodies are screaming for relief.

Hawkins learned from his ordeal and trained for Doha in his garden shed, with two electric heaters on full blast. He was leading again late in Doha but, though he faded to finish fourth, he crossed the line on his feet this time.

Now he, and many more like him, particularly from cooler parts of the world, will be able to plan their next year of training thinking only of how to improve such things as their oxygen take up, their running economy and build their strength and endurance, and no longer try to find a way to “just survive”.