Athletics | Marathon weather has been a constant topic of discussion at prestigious competitions, and the European Championships are no exception: Competitors run in the midday heat

When the European athletics championships start on Monday in Munich, the runners competing in the marathon have a hot job ahead of them.

The women’s marathon starts at 10:30 local time, the men’s start is an hour later.

Placing the races at noon has surprised the runners, because August in Munich is quite hot. For example BBC weather reports according to the temperature will be around 25 degrees on Monday.

Marathons often start early in the morning, when the weather is not yet at its hottest. A transfer was also attempted in Munich. 50 athletes wrote a petition trying to change the time. Swedish public broadcasting company SVT tellsthat no change is expected.

Competing in Swedish colors Hanna Lindholm wonders about the start time in an interview with SVT.

“This departure time is a bit crazy. I haven’t run marathons in Europe at this start time. Only the Stockholm marathon tends to start at 12 o’clock,” he was amazed.

However, Lindholm says that he has decided not to worry about it. According to him, cloudy weather is expected for Monday, which could help the situation a little.

of Munich The marathon is not the first race marathon to talk about weather conditions.

At last year’s Tokyo Olympics, the walks and marathons were moved to Sapporo. For the race organizers, moving to another city was a painful decision.

Before the move, they suggested that walks and marathons would start at three in the morning local time. However, the International Olympic Committee stuck to the transfer requirement, and this is how it was done. Tokyo was considered too hot and humid.

The World Championships before Tokyo were held in Doha, Qatar, in hot conditions. In stadium sports, the conditions were made easier in an air-conditioned arena, but there was no similar help in road sports.

The races started at midnight, but the temperature was still 35 degrees. The first road race was the women’s marathon, where 27 competitors stopped. There were 63 runners, so the dropout rate was over 40.

“The conditions were quite inhumane. This was close to extreme,” said the representative of Finland Annemari Hyryläinen After the Doha race.

Free discussions of road sports were also not reached in Eugene, Oregon, where the World Championships were contested in July.

President of the International Athletics Federation Sebastian Coe put the cat on the table. Coe blinked In an interview with the BBC, that marathons and walks would be competed at a different time from other World Championships. In that case, road sports could be held either in spring or autumn, when the weather allows long-lasting sports to be performed better.

Coe speculated that climate change might force a solution. He commented on the issue after running in Oregon in 32 degree heat. At the same time, Coe reminded that the situation would have been the same if the games had been in London, for example.

“Climate change is with us and it won’t go away.”

A strong rejection of the idea came from Sweden, for example. Walking World Cup medalist Perseus Karlström Mum Siv Karlström said the idea was idiotic and would destroy the species.