Curled up on a small, white rectangle of fabric on the grass by a park bench in Paris, Italian swimmer Thomas Ceccon inadvertently took the internet by storm simply by sleeping outside. The moment, posted to social media on Monday by a fellow Olympic athlete, came a week after Ceccon failed to qualify for the men’s 200-meter backstroke finals, despite having just won gold in the 100-meter event.
In an interview with an Italian broadcaster, Ceccon blamed his performance gap on subpar sleeping conditions in the Olympic Village — namely, heat. This week, media speculation that the uncomfortable temperatures were also behind his alfresco nap stirred an already roiling pot of concerns around the impact of extreme weather on this year’s summer games. (The Italian Swimming Federation denied that Ceccon’s nap was related to conditions in the Olympic village.)
In the weeks leading up to the Paris Olympics, weather forecasters and athletes alike feared that the games could become the hottest on record, surpassing the 2021 Tokyo events, where high humidity and 90-degree-Fahr... Read more
