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TOKYO – The hottest athletes in all of the Tokyo Olympics may be the goalkeepers in field hockey.
Consider the conditions in Tuesday’s semi-finals between Belgium and India: a 100-degree heat index, artificial turf, little or no cloud cover or wind, and a 10:30am start. pile.
Now listen to what Belgium’s goalkeeper Vincent Vanasch was wearing during the 5-2 win at the Oi Hockey Stadium: a helmet, a black long-sleeved jersey, shorts and pads on his hands, shoulders, chest, knees, shins and feet – with a useful rocket cannon, but not for Tokyo summers.
“It feels like 50 degrees in there,” said Vanasch, 33. In Celsius, that means roughly one million degrees Fahrenheit. (Actually 122) He continued, “But you deal with it.”
The many things the second-placed Belgian team did to cope with the Tokyo heat kept them one win away from their first Olympic gold. And it all actually started in a heat chamber in a university house.
Mick Beunen, a former Belgian international who has overseen the team’s training since 2010, studied physical education and training science at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. There she met Peter Hespel, professor of exercise physiology and sports nutrition.
Beunen, 49, had previously sent players to the university’s Athletic Performance Center, led by Hespel, for evaluation. But it sent out all potential national team players last year while planning Tokyo’s sweltering humidity and heat.
They were able to simulate conditions between 12 and 40 degrees Celsius (roughly 54 to 104 degrees Fahrenheit) and altitudes from sea level to about 7,000 meters above sea level, Hespel said in an email. They set the conditions to 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit) and 70 percent relative humidity, a typical summer day in Tokyo, and had players exercise to mimic the tension of the game.
Hespel said experts measure sweat rate, sweat composition, body core and skin temperatures, and players’ perceptions of fatigue and overheating. Based on this, he said that all players have established a ranking based on their risk of heat-related fatigue, illness or injury, and that coaches have created “heat acclimation plans” specific to each player.
Beunen said the data is not used to weed out players, but to identify which ones are most affected by the heat and help them improve.
“We just want to be the fittest team, so a lot of work has been done over the years to make everyone better,” he said in a phone interview.
Belgium’s team coaches have collected useful data in other ways as well. They check the fever of the players before, during and after the training. And since the beginning of Beunen’s tenure, the team has used wearable technology to measure players’ heart rates, sprint speeds, distances traveled, and other metrics that help coaches and coaches identify who is at higher risk of injury or who is at higher risk. . tired.
Beunen said the data, accessible in real-time via a smartphone or tablet, helped head coach Shane McLeod fine-tune his substitution plan during matches.
“If you see the numbers in hot conditions, you can adapt to that and help players overcome it,” Beunen said. Said.
The Belgian team, whose summers are much cooler, also arrived in Japan early and trained in Hiroshima for a week to acclimatize.
Beunen said that at the Olympics, players drank what he called it. slurries — essentially electrolyte-rich drinks mixed with crushed ice — to lower body temperature a bit during games and before jogging around. Beyond that, Vanasch said he drank nothing but water from morning to night.
Fortunately, he doesn’t have to race on the court like his teammates, but goalkeeper Vanasch has to carry a lot of equipment, so he wears a cooling vest underneath and also applies a cooling spray. In Tuesday’s game, he shifted into clean gear at halftime.
Belgium’s training really shined late in that match. Staying in 2 for three quarters with fifth-placed India, Belgium took the lead convincingly in the last frame, despite playing their seventh game in 11 days.
“We knew the conditions were going to be tough,” said 33-year-old forward Cedric Charlier, sweating after the victory. “We’ve worked harder, we’ve done a lot of double training, and we’re ready to dig deeper into what we have inside.”
Thursday brings the toughest test: Belgium, which won a silver medal at the 2016 Olympics, face off against top-ranked Australia. Beunen said the team’s success so far is proof that their preparations for the Olympics and the heat are working. But even though Belgian players have competed in hot places like Australia and India, he said the Tokyo Games were “the hardest tournament they’ve ever played”.
Fortunately, Vanasch said the final game was in Tokyo at night, away from the punishing daylight sun. “We are ready to shift into another gear,” he said.
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