REF-061 · Racinais et al., 2015 · Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, Vol. · Paper

Consensus recommendations on training and competing in the heat

Astrong evidenceMeasured on a mixed groupWritten before October 2026, being re-checked

Expert Panel

International consensus statement by 17 authors led by Racinais (with Alonso, Coutts, Flouris, Girard and others), from a topical conference held at Aspetar Orthopaedic and Sports Medicine Hospital, Doha, Qatar, on 23-24 March 2014 that ended in a roundtable discussion (full text, checked 2026-09-28: Aim and scope).

Key Findings (recommendations)

Heat acclimatization — the most important intervention to reduce physiological strain and optimize performance; repeated exercise-heat exposures over 1-2 weeks

Hydration: start competition and training euhydrated and minimize dehydration during exercise (the abstract sets no percentage threshold)

Cooling: with commercial cooling systems (e.g. cooling vests) athletes can facilitate heat loss or increase heat-storage capacity before training or competing

Organizers: large shaded areas, cooling and rehydration facilities, scheduling that minimizes health risk — especially in mass-participation events and on the first hot days of the year

Governing bodies: consider additional or longer recovery periods between and within events for hydration and cooling when competitions are held in the heat (following the 2008 Olympics and 2014 FIFA World Cup)

Practical Application

The consensus puts heat acclimatization first — repeated exercise-heat exposures over 1-2 weeks — then arriving euhydrated and limiting dehydration during the event, then pre-cooling with vests or similar before the start; for a hot race the plan is built in that order.

Not from this paper; the base's own practice: a drinking plan on the order of 500-800 mL/h with sodium for a hot event, adjusted to the athlete's measured sweat rate; ice or cold drinks at the start line; a mountain event in heat is treated as a heat event, not a climbing event.

Inference, not tested here: the consensus is written for events where heat clearly limits performance; for very short efforts the acclimatization advice matters less than the hydration and cooling advice.

Limitations

Consensus statement: recommendations synthesize the literature to 2014-2015 without effect sizes in the abstract; the panel size and venue are full-text details.

Sport-general; nothing cycling-specific about wind cooling on the bike versus running.

How this entry was checked and changed

Content correction 2026-09-27

Removed unsourced figures: "<2% body mass" (the abstract says minimize dehydration, no threshold), "short events <10 min minimally affected; long events >60 min critically affected" (not in the abstract); "17 leading scientists" replaced by named authors with the venue labelled as full text.

Added the organizer and governing-body recommendations from the abstract; "500-800 mL/h with sodium" labelled as the base's own practice.

2026-09-28: lines labelled "full text; not checked" read against the open-access full text (publisher PDF in the University of Lausanne repository, iris.unil.ch): 1 confirmed (venue and year; conference dates 23-24 March 2014 and 17-author panel added), 0 corrected, 0 removed.