mental_floss magazine
SUBSCRIBE >
GIFT SUBSCRIPTIONS >
DIGITAL SUBSCRIPTIONS >
subscriber services >
We’ve all heard about the dangers of global warming and climate change. It’s going to make the oceans rise, drown our cities, kill plants, cause hurricanes and ruin the Earth for our grandkids. But that’s all secondary to the real effects of global warming; it’s wreaking havoc on the sports world. Here’s a look at seven ways climate change is messing up sports.
Marathon Mayhem
Organizers were worried going into last weekend’s Chicago Marathon. The temperatures were expected to top anything seen in the marathon’s 30-year history, which meant some runners could overheat or become dehydrated. Either way, they knew times would be down. So they responded with new cooling stations, record amounts of water, 700 medical workers on standby and mist adapters for fire hydrants along the route. Even with all that planning, they weren’t nearly ready for what happened. One man died from a heart condition and 312 other runners were treated at hospitals or medical stations. The city ran out of ambulances to treat runners and cut the race short, diverting runners to Grant Park, where they later complained of a lack of water. All told, the record-setting marathon (in temperatures only, not speed) was a mess and could cost Chicago the 2016 Olympics.
What Would Balto Say?
Not surprisingly, it’s the winter sports that are getting hit hardest by the Earth’s rising temperatures. Skiing officials around the world are trying to deal with retreating glaciers in the Alps and melting snow elsewhere in the world. Some estimates say that Aspen won’t be able to support skiing as early as 2050. The Lake Champlain Ice Fishing Championship has been scrapped in recent years because the lake hasn’t frozen over. Biathlon trials have been canceled. Even the Iditarod, that intrepid Alaskan race, has succumbed to heat. Every year since 2003, the race hasn’t been able to start in the traditional starting point in Anchorage because of melting snow and slush. In the race’s 30 years before 2003, the starting point had never been moved, but now the “Idita-detour,” as one race official called it, has become a bit of a tradition itself.
Snow moves Cleveland to Milwaukee
The 2007 Cleveland Indians season opened with high hopes, but this being Cleveland, those hopes couldn’t be realized without a struggle. That struggle started right off the bat during the April 6 home opener against Seattle. With an unseasonable snow storm in town, the players started the game in conditions more akin to a nasty football game (check out one fan’s video of the affair here). With only one strike left until the game could become official, the umps decided to call the game due to weather, much to the dismay of the Indians (who were on the wining end of a shutout). Some last-minute rescheduling and subsequent canceling of the remaining games of the series resulted in a four-day break for both teams, who spent the time playing in the snow. The next Indians series, this time against the Angels, was moved to Miller Park, where the teams could play under a roof and not worry about the freak snowstorm that followed the Indians to Milwaukee. The scheduling snafu from the canceled games meant both Cleveland and Seattle had to forfeit several days off to fit the games in and Cleveland would end up playing home games in three different cities.
Miami Dolphins Cool Off
The Miami Dolphins used to be really good, back in the days of the perfect season and Dan Marino. But lately, things haven’t been as hot for the Dolphins. That’s partly because of, well, how hot it’s gotten. The scorching heat during training camp and the early season was endangering players during practices, so the team decided to build an air-conditioned “practice bubble.” The bubble, which is oddly both inflatable and hurricane-safe, allowed the team to practice away from the sun and mimic the conditions of a domed stadium. However, it didn’t allow the players to mimic the conditions of playing outside in the baking Florida sun. The Dolphins used to have a big edge in early season home games because they were so accustomed to working through the humidity, but since the bubble was built they’ve gone 5-8 in such games.
NASCAR Refuels
Of all the major sports, auto racing is hands-down the worst for the environment. An event that involves hundreds of cars driving for several hours could only be topped by, say, the World Championship Triathlon of Tree Chopping, Gas Burning and Baby Seal Clubbing (coming this winter to ESPN2). However, stock cars have been taking steps to go greener. The IndyCar Series is racing on 100 percent ethanol, while the American LeMans series has switched to a 10 percent ethanol mixture (every little bit helps). NASCAR hasn’t taken the plunge yet, but they’re expected to. Of course, given that it took them a couple of decades to switch to unleaded fuels, I wouldn’t hold your breath. There’s no timeline on a NASCAR switch to alternative fuels, which would also require them to make over the cars to run effectively.
Super Bowl XL, as in XL degrees
The first time Detroit hosted the Super Bowl in 1982, ice storms hit the city and the wind chill effect made it feel like it was 27 below outside. That led the NFL to avoid cold-weather sites; with the exception of Minneapolis in 1992, the Super Bowl didn’t go north again until 2006, when it returned to Detroit. Rather than fighting the supposedly inevitable winter storm that would hit the city, organizers decided to embrace it and turn Detroit into a winter wonderland. Instead, global warming threw the city for a loop with highs in the 40’s and rain, not snow. A 28-foot-tall snow slide melted and the Motown Winter Blast had to cope with conditions that even made the fake snow melt. All of the intense planning that went into snow removal almost went to waste. It did snow on Super Bowl Sunday, but nowhere near what organizers were expecting, forcing them to scrap most of the snow-themed festivities around the city.
Buggy Baseball
Blame it on the curse of Rocky Colavito, but the Cleveland Indians have gotten hit by global warming twice this year alone. During last week’s anticipated series between the Indians and the Yankees, it was the non-roster players that ended up capturing the headlines: a swarm of bugs that set on the field like a plague of locusts in the eighth inning. They buzzed around the players and forced coaches to grab all the OFF they could find. Trying to battle the bugs, Yankee phenom Joba Chamberlain threw a wild pitch that allowed a run to score. Ask any Yankees fan and they’ll say they only lost the game, and the series, because of the bugs. The bugs in question, midges, seek out warm weather and usually can’t be found in Cleveland in October, when temperatures dip. But the unseasonable weather meant the midges were still around during postseason baseball (where the April-like freezing temps are more the norm) and were attracted by the bright lights of the stadium, where they put their stamp on the path to the World Series.
Note: For more reading on global warming in sports, check out this excellent article from Sports Illustrated in March. Also, see this piece from Slate about which spectator sports are best for the environment.
Comments (10)
Comment
Interesting article. However, shouldn’t the World Championship Triathlon of Tree Chopping, Gas Burning and Baby Seal Clubbing be on ESPN8: “The Ocho”?
posted by SpaceMonkeyX on 10-12-2007 at 3:20 pm
If Balto were alive today, I have no doubt he would condemn the Iditarod. The race is terribly cruel to dogs. For the facts, visit the Sled Dog Action Coalition website, www.helpsleddogs.org.
Here’s a short list of what happens to the dogs during the Iditarod: death, paralysis, penile frostbite, bleeding ulcers, bloody diarrhea, lung damage, pneumonia, ruptured discs, viral diseases, broken bones, torn muscles and tendons, vomiting, hypothermia, sprains, fur loss, broken teeth, torn footpads and anemia.
At least 133 dogs have died in the Iditarod. There is no official count of dog deaths available for the race’s early years. In “WinterDance: the Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod,” a nonfiction book, Gary Paulsen describes witnessing an Iditarod musher brutally kicking a dog to death during the race. He wrote, “All the time he was kicking the dog. Not with the imprecision of anger, the kicks, not kicks to match his rage but aimed, clinical vicious kicks. Kicks meant to hurt deeply, to cause serious injury. Kicks meant to kill.”
Causes of death have also included strangulation in towlines, internal hemorrhaging after being gouged by a sled, liver injury, heart failure, and pneumonia. “Sudden death” and “external myopathy,” a fatal condition in which a dog’s muscles and organs deteriorate during extreme or prolonged exercise, have also occurred. The 1976 Iditarod winner, Jerry Riley, was accused of striking his dog with a snow hook (a large, sharp and heavy metal claw). In 1996, one of Rick Swenson’s dogs died while he mushed his team through waist-deep water and ice. The Iditarod Trail Committee banned both mushers from the race but later reinstated them. In many states these incidents would be considered animal cruelty. Swenson is now on the Iditarod Board of Directors.
In the 2001 Iditarod, a sick dog was sent to a prison to be cared for by inmates and received no veterinary care. He was chained up in the cold and died. Another dog died by suffocating on his own vomit.
No one knows how many dogs die in training or after the race each year.
On average, 53 percent of the dogs who start the race do not make it across the finish line. According to a report published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, of those who do cross, 81 percent have lung damage. A report published in the Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine said that 61 percent of the dogs who finish the Iditarod have ulcers versus zero percent pre-race.
Tom Classen, retired Air Force colonel and Alaskan resident for over 40 years, tells us that the dogs are beaten into submission:
“They’ve had the hell beaten out of them.” “You don’t just whisper into their ears, ‘OK, stand there until I tell you to run like the devil.’ They understand one thing: a beating. These dogs are beaten into submission the same way elephants are trained for a circus. The mushers will deny it. And you know what? They are all lying.” -USA Today, March 3, 2000 in Jon Saraceno’s column
Beatings and whippings are common. Jim Welch says in his book Speed Mushing Manual, “I heard one highly respected [sled dog] driver once state that “‘Alaskans like the kind of dog they can beat on.’” “Nagging a dog team is cruel and ineffective…A training device such as a whip is not cruel at all but is effective.” “It is a common training device in use among dog mushers…A whip is a very humane training tool.”
During the 2007 Iditarod, eyewitnesses reported that musher Ramy Brooks kicked, punched and beat his dogs with a ski pole and a chain. Brooks admitted to hitting his dogs with a wooden trail marker when they refused to run. The Iditarod Trail Committee suspended Brooks for two years, but only for the actions he admitted. By ignoring eyewitness accounts, the Iditarod encouraged animal abuse. When mushers know that eyewitness accounts will be disregarded, they are more likely to hurt their dogs and lie about it later.
Mushers believe in “culling” or killing unwanted dogs, including puppies. Many dogs who are permanently disabled in the Iditarod, or who are unwanted for any reason, are killed with a shot to the head, dragged or clubbed to death. “On-going cruelty is the law of many dog lots. Dogs are clubbed with baseball bats and if they don’t pull are dragged to death in harnesses…..” wrote Alaskan Mike Cranford in an article for Alaska’s Bush Blade Newspaper (March, 2000).
Jon Saraceno wrote in his March 3, 2000 column in USA Today, “He [Colonel Tom Classen] confirmed dog beatings and far worse. Like starving dogs to maintain their most advantageous racing weight. Skinning them to make mittens. Or dragging them to their death.”
The Iditarod, with its history of abuse, could not be legally held in many states, because doing so would violate animal cruelty laws.
Iditarod administrators promote the race as a commemoration of sled dogs saving the children of Nome by bringing diphtheria serum from Anchorage in 1925. However, the co-founder of the Iditarod, Dorothy Page, said the race was not established to honor the sled drivers and dogs who carried the serum. In fact, 600 miles of this serum delivery was done by train and the other half was done by dogs running in relays, with no dog running over 100 miles. This isn’t anything like the Iditarod.
The race has led to the proliferation of horrific dog kennels in which the dogs are treated very cruelly. Many kennels have over 100 dogs and some have as many as 200. It is standard for the dogs to spend their entire lives outside tethered to metal chains that can be as short as four feet long. In 1997 the United States Department of Agriculture determined that the tethering of dogs was inhumane and not in the animals’ best interests. The chaining of dogs as a primary means of enclosure is prohibited in all cases where federal law applies. A dog who is permanently tethered is forced to urinate and defecate where he sleeps, which conflicts with his natural instinct to eliminate away from his living area.
Iditarod dogs are prisoners of abuse.
posted by Margery Glickman on 10-12-2007 at 5:56 pm
My parents ran the Chicago Marathon this year and were forced to stop when the race officials started taking down the course and making all the runners board buses and trains to the finish line. They ran out of water and Gatorade at most of the stations; after running the first 20 miles of the race, my parents were upset about not receiving any credit and they got off the bus and took finisher’s medals anyway.
posted by Abi on 10-12-2007 at 8:33 pm
@Margery Glickman. Its the way of life for sled dogs around the world.
Read ‘Call of the Wild’ goddammit.
posted by twodollars on 10-13-2007 at 9:48 pm
Ah….taking me back to my childhood when all the stories were of the coming ice age and the stories of record cold temps to prove it.
The good ol’ days….
posted by Karen on 10-14-2007 at 8:57 am
On the subject of global warming, The Academy recently pulled Al Gore’s Oscar because of growing scientific disagreement with “An Inconvenient Truth.” Also, UK courts ruled that the movie would not be showed in British schools because of all the inconsistencies and outright lies contained in it. Huzzah for truth!
I do realize that I am in the minority on this particular site; this comment will probably not be posted, just like my other comments on global warming in the past. It’s said that Mental Floss needs to censor patrons to hide the truth.
posted by Andrew on 10-14-2007 at 9:20 am
I don’t mean to be an ass but i think the marathon cancellation in Chicago is a cop out. I mean s***, remember when Sierra Leone was in turmoil (worse than it is now). Women and children were running marathons shoeless in 105° weather daily.
posted by Jared Probst on 10-15-2007 at 1:58 pm
twodollars- So….that makes it all ok, right?? Sheesh.
posted by cdc on 10-17-2007 at 7:15 am
In Colorado, we had a winter with record-setting cold temperatures and snowfall last year. Strange…I didn’t see a single article about global warming during the whole month. Could it be that you’re reporting on the effects of LOCALIZED weather phenomena on sporting events?
posted by Greg on 10-17-2007 at 9:03 am
I also live in Colorado and we are getting snow right now. I think the predictions of the 70’s are coming true and we are getting global cooling. I thought the sixties were all about questioning everything and everyone. I guess all the global warming proponents forgot that. I also thought that nothing in science was ever fact. It is to remain a hypothisis till proven. Problem is it can’t be proven or disproven yet.
posted by Mtheaded on 10-17-2007 at 11:43 am