The plans for most of our Tokyo Olympians over the past 12 months have been thrown into disarray thanks to Covid-19.
Rather than sitting back and contemplating the ‘what ifs’, a number of teams and athletes have been preparing in New Zealand the best they can.
That includes replicating the stifling heat expected in Japan at the end of July, in what's being classed as the hottest Games in history.
Recreating 40-degree, 75 per cent humidity conditions is possible thanks to a bunker hidden away in Auckland’s Millennium Institute.
1 NEWS Sport presenter Andrew Saville spent just four minutes inside it with Black Sticks men’s players and realised fairly quickly he was perhaps in the wrong attire for the situation.
For the players though, the heat chamber is perfect, considering what awaits them in Tokyo, High Performance Sport NZ’s Lorenz Kissling said.
“[They’ll have] up to eight games in 13 days,” Kissling said.
“It’s super important they can tolerate the heat.”
Saville did his best to tolerate it, although he was helped by an anecdote from Black Sticks midfielder Aidan Sarikaya.
“Typically, we weigh ourselves before and after,” Sarikaya said.
“The last one, I lost two kilograms in 40 minutes.”
Saville joked perhaps he should stay in a bit longer then before eventually making his way back to the studio and doing the 6pm bulletin – after changing his shirt.
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