a minipost
Natural conditions impact outdoor sports. Tokyo in late July and early August is "interesting" - it's very hot with humidity rated as oppressive about 60% of the time. Pleasant weather doesn't return until the Fall, but TV demands drive the Olympic schedule. Some endurance events will probably be run at night and athletes will be adding high temperature conditioning to their training routines in the next month or two. Excessive heat has important physics and physiology consequences and the understanding of physiology has changed a lot in the past decade (you can drink too much in endurance events and electrolyte drinks are ineffective). Perhaps something for future posts, but for now let's stick with the wind.
During the Olympics Tokyo will probably have consistent winds around 7 mph mostly from the South or East. To establish a record events like the 100 and 200 meter sprint, 110 meter hurdles and the long and triple jumps record the wind velocity and require a trailing windspeed to be less than 2 meters per second - about 4.5 mph - measured at the track. The wind doesn't matter much within a race, but qualifications can be biased if the wind changes much between qualifying events.
You'd think a tailwind would always be advantageous for hurdlers, but they have to mentally adjust their strides and launch points for a variety of winds and only the best can handle a variety of conditions. Long jumpers have to adjust their approach to launch as close to the takeoff point as possible and not foul. Assuming they succeed, a trailing wind can be a big advantage. Except for record setting pole vaulting is similar. The height they clear is related to the square of takeoff speed so a tailwind can be a big help. Oddly there's no wind assistance limit for records. Perhaps an approaching hurricane would be useful in world record attempts.
Closed road course races are problematic. One might think tailwind and headwind portions average out, but if the wind is at a constant velocity, the headwind portions are always slower (here's a simple explanation). Of course there's the larger problem of shoe performance so maybe we're at a point where records aren't terribly meaningful in running.
For some sports the wind adds an interesting dimension. The density of a beach volleyball is low compared to other most other sports balls, so the wind makes a big difference. Additionally volleyballs have interesting aerodynamic properties in airspeeds between 14 and 17 meters per second - speeds commonly seen in the women's game and exploited by the better players. Teams must to adjust for windspeed and direction, but events often go on in strong and gusty winds - sometimes with heavy rain, which is not unlikely in Tokyo during the Olympics.
Many other sports are impacted by the wind, but last Spring the final project in a science of sports class I taught got my attention. An amateur bicycle racer/biology major proposed human powered flight. You would charge a battery by frantically pedaling generator. After some amount of time you'd take flight adding whatever power you could muster with your legs to what the motor could produce. Finding the right limits for weight, charging times, and allowable technologies would make or break the sport. It probably wouldn't be tmuch of a spectator sport, but it would make a great project for engineering students.
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