Season 5 Episode 6: Keeping Your Cool - How Engineering is Preparing Athletes for a Hot Olympics

Impulse To Innovation

As the Olympics gets underway, summertime temperatures will only continue to get hotter, giving athletes additional challenges as they seek to bring home medals.

With Paris 2024 taking place in the host city’s hottest months of the year, leading athletes are already warning that intense heat could lead to competitors collapsing and in worst case scenarios dying during the Games.

What role can engineering play in ensuring athletes, officials & volunteers, and those just watching the games, stay cool in an around the various sporting venues?

Dr Jo Corbett University of Portsmouth (right) conducting heat chamber tests in the University's Extreme Environments Laboratory with Jamie Farndale, a rugby 7s player for Great Britain. https://www.port.ac.uk/news-events-and-blogs/news/rings-of-fire-heat-risks-at-the-2024-paris-olympics

Helen's guests this month are Ruth Shilston and Professor Mike Tipton. They share their thoughts on the potential heat risks facing the Olympics this year, and in the future, in light of growing global temperatures, and how engineers are designing devices and building facilities to mitigate the effects of heat.

Nike Hyperice Vest - Nike Press Release 21st June 2024

Ruth Shilston is a fellow of the imeche and a current trustee and Technical Director of Engineering Sciences at Mott MacDonald. She has been a leading specialist on the engineering of major construction projects worldwide and is a subject matter expert in human thermal comfort and climate aware design as well as Author of numerous industry guidelines, technical and policy papers on heat adaption and construction.

Mike Tipton MBE is Professor of Human and Applied Physiology at the University of Portsmouth. Mike has spent 40 years working in the areas of thermoregulation, environmental and occupational physiology. He leads the Extreme Environments Laboratory, in the School of Sport, Health & Exercise Science at Portsmouth, examining the physiological, patho-physiological and psychological responses to adverse environments and the selection, preparation and protection of those who enter such environments. He has authored over 750 papers, reports and books on the subject and in April this year published the ‘Rings of Fire – Heat Risks at the 2024 Paris Olympics’ the second in this series of reports highlighting the worrying impact global warming and climate change is having on elite sports.

Useful Links:

Rings of Fire – Heat Risks at the 2024 Paris Olympics

Sustainable, Inclusive, Innovative: The Role Of Engineering In Sport

Heat Risks at the Paris Olympics

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You can find more information about the work of the IMechE at www.imeche.org