Roger Black - It’s all about preparation

The effects of travel, jet lag and pollution have been superseded by heat and humidity as the biggest environmental threats to Team GB’s success at this year’s Games. While the competitive demands vary for every sport, our athletes competing in certain outdoor events in Beijing, like Sarah Storey (who I recently found out suffers from asthma!)

Anticipating what the weather is likely to do can generate the 1% advantage that can make the difference between you being the best or amongst the rest. What athletes eat and drink and how they control their body’s temperature can have a profound effect on their performance during the hours of hard training.

Experts have been brought in to prepare our athletes. Although they won’t share all of their lessons as I have no doubt that some of them will deliver our team the extra competitive edge. I was interested to hear how they were preparing our athletes to overcome thermal stress. Athletes have been monitored in a special chamber set to around 30 degrees Celsius and about 70 percent humidity to see how their bodies respond to heat and humidity. This has highlighted that some athletes might need cooling vests before an event while dipping their feet into buckets of cold water or drinking certain amounts of liquids. Every athlete is going to respond differently. I also read that arrangements have been made for Team GB to have exclusive use of the training facilities in Macau for the two to three weeks prior to the Games. Macau is in the same time zone as Beijing, offers similar climatic conditions to aid acclimatisation and is close to the Beijing Athletes’ Olympic Village to avoid the dreaded travel fatigue.

If I were competing with just a few weeks to go, I’d usually be worrying all the time and I’d be horrible to be around! In Atlanta at the 1996 Olympic Games, I was struggling to recover from a knee operation and some people in the sporting world were suggesting that at 30, I was past my best. But a good friend and former British 400-metre runner, one day gave me a pep talk that changed my whole mindset. He told me, “don’t focus on anything you can’t control, like weather conditions or the performance of others, only focus on the things you can control”. From that moment I stopped fearing failure, and this is the best advice I could give any of our athletes going to Beijing who have any doubts about the conditions.

I look forward to catching up with you just before the start of the Games to share my views on which Team GB athletes I believe are the ones to watch out for at this year’s Games!



Roger Black MBE