Tennis madness !

Is a piece of silver and a sporting title worth dieing for ?   That was the question players were entitled to ask at the Tennis at Melbourne Park as Australia sweltered in a summer heat wave.  The temperature on the centre court reached 43.3 degrees - and on the outer unshaded courts it rose to 52.3 degrees - before the " Extreme Heat policy " was invoked at 2 pm.

Allowing athletes to perform at maximum exertion in those conditions can be fatal.  It caused several players to withdraw and concede matches and it will certainly draw extreme criticism from other parts of the world that the final outcome was influenced by the playing conditions.

Even sitting in the stands and watching the games required the paramedics to attend to 970 spectators who suffered heat exhaustion.    We are told that global warming will result in each summer being hotter for longer and all sporting codes need to adopt a common policy - at which temperature play stops.

This is a medical decision rather than something to be decided by the committee of a sporting body.  It needs to be enshrined in law because there is a tendency to push on with contests in extreme heat conditions by balancing the financial outcome to the detriment of damage to contestants.   Individuals who show a reluctance to expose their bodies to this risk level fear they may not gain future team selection as a punishment.

It is a reasonable expectation that every athlete should not be asked to compete in conditions that have an elevated health risk - and that applies on a world basis.   The selection of Doha as the venue for a world cup competition raises concern that it's sizzling summer temperatures were not seriously taken into consideration when that decision was made.   As usual, world politics trumps common sense in all avenues of decision making.

If we establish a protocol at which play ceases when the temperature reaches a certain level it will have a huge new influence on the scheduling of contests.   The financial aspect of interrupted play will need to be taken into consideration in planning events and in many instances more moderate weather months will be preferred to high risk mid summer timing.    It may even require the rescheduling of the start and finish of the seasons for entire sporting codes.

Some may argue that this heat wave was a pure aberration of nature and should be disregarded but that is not the outlook of weather scientists.    We are living in a hotter world - and we need to plan accordingly from a safety point of view !