Did You Know, 20 Percent Of Elite Runners At The 2024 Paris Olympics Have Asma Disorders?

Illustration - World elite athletes competing in the 2024 Paris Olympics are not a few who suffer from asthma. (Canva)

JAKARTA - Athletics is the mother of all kinds of sports. In multi-branch sports competitions, athletics has always been a prima donna. Especially if competing in the Olympics, athletics is always in the main spotlight. They have to sacrifice their physical condition due to heavy training, so that many experience asthma disorders.

But did you know that 20 percent of elite athletes competing in the 2024 Paris Olympics are people with chronic asthma? It seems strange, but that is the fact found from research at the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports in 2023

This condition is known as exercise-induced bronchoconstriction (EIB), simply called asthma due to sports.

"An elite athlete will risk twice as big asthma as an ordinary person," said John Dickinson, professor of Sports Sciences from the University of Kent, England.

According to the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, swimming athletes are the group most at risk of developing asthma than other water sports players.

One of the triggers is the gas from chlorine substances that are used as pool cleaners. The gas floats over the water, and is inhaled by swimmers," Dickinson said again.

At the Olympics, athletes with asthma are allowed to use fire. The types, doses, and ingredients oftiples are severely restricted, so the drug is not categorized as doping. Obviously here a solid strategy must be prepared before athletes compete in the field.

British women's runners with a marathon world record for 16 years, Paula Radcliffe is one of the sufferers of acute asthma. Likewise with long-jumpers and well-known women's athletes, Jackie Joyner-Kersee who are also chronic asthma sufferers.