It was 35 degrees Celsius on September 6 with a humidex in the ceiling in New York when Daniil Medvedev, in the quarter-finals of the US Open at the Arthur Ashe stadium in Flushing Meadows, threw at the camera which was spying on him against -dive the sentence which, like a global prairie fire, immediately went around the planet: “A player will die, and they will see. »
The months of June, July and August in the summer of 2023 were the hottest in history.
The Tour de France, with its superhuman exploits and its Promethean rides in the high mountains, is traditionally contested in July. This summer, in Issoire, in Auvergne, it was 52 degrees at the finish line. At Flushing Meadows, Medvedev, despite his face roughened by the repeated rubbing of the towel, was ultimately not too much to complain about: he finished his match in less than three hours, then made it to the final to return home with a million and a half dollars in his pocket. The question he asked at the press conference is no less worthy of reflection: “The worst thing is that we could have continued if we had to. […] How far can we go? »
Climate change is already affecting the lives of a significant number of athletes, both amateurs and professionals, and it is only just beginning. If we could have cloned Churchill and placed him at the head of a world government, he would tell us today: “I have nothing to promise you but sweat, sweat and more sweat …”
Adapt, they said. It ranges from the simple jogger, obliged to move his outings to the early morning and evening to avoid the shower of molten lead around the zenith, to the flamboyant deserts of Arabia or the Emirates, with the Formula 1 Grand Prix of Abu Dhabi running at night under the spotlights and a Qatari soccer World Cup played in December, serve, in this area, as laboratories for the rest of humanity.
Which disciplines will suffer the most? Which ones will be spared? On Tuesday, a ski resort in the Alps, La Sambuy, permanently ceased its activities due to lack of snow. There are limits to creating a winter landscape with refrigeration cannons as the Chinese did for the Beijing Winter Games. Would this form of bleaching and the air conditioning of entire stadiums be the only horizon, in the form of shoveling carbonic clouds into the neighbor’s yard, to offer sporting humanity?
And the outdoors? This summer, we had the impression that half of Quebecers’ playing field was going up in flames. Even in areas spared from fires, venturing outside to run, swim or cycle through the smoke and particle concentrations of northern smog was the equivalent of smoking two packs of cigarettes in a city like Mexico City.
Moose hunters, who will soon take up the woods, are increasingly aware of the deleterious effects of the intense heat of October on the meat of the animals they kill and butcher. It’s all well and good to let the game fester, but when the maggots get involved, only the foxes benefit. Late heat also influences the behavior of animals, which do not like sticky atmospheres any more than we do. In scorching temperatures, the luminous beast will prolong its nap and only emerge from the “dirty wood” at nightfall.
Unlike what we see in France, where, it is said, 95% of hunts are organized in the form of hunts which sometimes bring together as many people as a tailgate party of American football, the Quebec nemrod, practicing stalking and fine hunting, is tactically dependent on the movements of its game. In the longer term, it is the slow migration of species through new territories and the faunal recomposition of regions which will change the habits of hunting enthusiasts. We now see deer tracks in the spruce forests of Haute-Mauricie!
Same for fishing. Warmer waters mean, as always in the kingdom of who-eats-who, some species are winning and others are losing ground. This distinguished being and attached to traditions that is, among all others, the salmon fisherman will have to get used to the idea that the striped bass are now chasing the smolts in the mouths of the rivers, and that if that does not help much Atlantic salmon, sea bass, I am told, make a pretty good catch at the end of a line, in addition to melting in your mouth.
And so, as the greenhouse effect intensifies, an expression whose metaphorical significance we are only just beginning to fully appreciate – because it is less the mercury itself which, for the moment, is crushing us, than this sweltering heat of equatorial jungle falling on the slightest patch of greenery to transform our September afternoons into unpleasant sweats and mosquito hatching – what will we do with our exercised bodies?
Less concerned than others by overheating problems, swimmers will continue to swim. Joggers will perhaps finally go and buy this belt designed to hang water bottles, on sale in all good stores that know their credit card as if it were the doormat on which customers wipe themselves. feet when entering, and they will continue to run.
Cyclists will be even more electric and ever less tired. The marathon runners will die. The Canadian will continue to skate, sell beer and fill the Bell Center with “ go go Habs go! » Baseball players will wipe their foreheads twice rather than once while chewing their bubble gum. Collectively, we will continue to move, like the animalcules that swarm in the drop of water placed on the spoon held above the flame of a gas burner.
Novelist, independent writer and atypical sports columnist, Louis Hamelin is the author of a dozen books.