"It's like you're submerged underwater, but the water is boiling, and you're kind of halfway cooked" — that's how one distance runner described conditions at the women's marathon at the 2019 World Athletics Championship in Doha on Sept. 27-28.
Even though the marathon started at 11:59 p.m., the race began and ended by the event's own metrics with a temperature of 32 degrees Celsius and 74 percent humidity, producing a heat index of 41.6 degrees. As a result, 28 of the 68 starters failed to finish the race.
On Oct. 16, the International Olympic Committee advised its Japanese counterpart that "to mitigate the effects of temperatures that may occur next summer," it wanted to move five long-distance events — the men's and women's marathons and 20-kilometer race walks, as well as the men's 50-kilometer race walk — from Tokyo to Sapporo, where temperatures are typically 5 to 6 degrees cooler than Tokyo in late July and early August.