China walks through fire and dominates the first day of athletics

Chengdu temperatures pushed limits on the first day of athletics. A scorching heat wave took over Shuangliu Sports Centre and brought hell to the hundreds of athletes who showed up at the venue yesterday.

“It is really hard to compete under these conditions, you struggle to breathe,” said Samantha Joseph, who ran the 400m hurdles for South Africa at the Chengdu FISU Summer Games.

The heat was especially hard on those who ran longer distances. Austrian Marcel Tobler explained that this weather prevents the body from cooling down, which is a very important process in his event, the 1500m. “You just keep sweating and it doesn’t vaporize, so you get so warmed up to the point that you can’t run that fast,” he said.

Athletes from all over the world, from both warmer and colder countries shared this sentiment. There is, however, one nation that appears to be immune to the heat: China.

Xia Yuyu relentlessly galloped her way to a gold medal in the women’s 10,000m final. She kept up with the Turkish pair who were leading the race until the last lap, when Xia turned on the afterburners and beat them by 17 seconds.

“There is no way to change the weather, we can only adapt,” she said. The 25-year-old student-athlete from Tsinghua University has been preparing for this specific race for a long time. “I skipped the Asian Games and other championships. My focus has been this Universiade,” she said.

The runners are not the only ones affected by the heat. Eliana Arruda Bandeira, from Portugal, got a silver medal in women’s shot put while feeling as if she had “low blood pressure”. But, just like in the 10,000m, a Chinese athlete endured.

Song Jiayuan completely dominated the competition, throwing the weight more than a metre further than Eliana, her closest opponent.

While an 18.56m throw guaranteed her the gold medal, it was not up to her standards. “I feel like today’s performance was average,” she said.

Even though Song came into the FISU Summer Games as the defending Asian shot put champion and number seven in the World Athletics ranking, she did not diminish the importance of a title on the collegiate level. “It’s an important gold medal in my career,” she said, “I am going to use this as motivation to move forward.”

The Shanghai University representative also made it clear that she was not fazed by the heat. “The great athletes can adapt to every [type of] weather,” she said.

Written by Pedro Consoli, FISU Young Reporter