Rain stopped play? Biggest worry now in British sport is extreme heat | Emma John

Climate crisis is on show every day when sportspeople do their thing and the rest of us sweat on the sofa

Nothing sharpens the distinction between professional athletes and the rest of us like a week of truly hot weather. While we’re apologetically crying off long-in-the-diary engagements – so sorry, just can’t face it in this weather – elite sportspeople are blinking the rivulets of sweat out of their eyes while squinting under a hot-and-heavy helmet, then doing 22-yard sprints with a couple of kilos of padding strapped to their legs.

As one of nature’s non-athletes, I speak not just with admiration, but with genuine wonder. My experience of the past week has been working out how not to do things, or if forced, doing them half-heartedly because, you know, I haven’t slept. My friends and I message each other the latest innovations in fan strategy (“apparently putting a frozen bottle of water in front of it helps”) and talk about our journeys on public transport as if we’ve just survived the Somme.

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