Which one can I play in the Saudi climate... Ronaldo or Messi?

Weather of Arabia - taller and softer soccer players such as Erling Haaland and Cristiano Ronaldo could outperform shorter athletes such as Lionel Messi in the future, due to climate change.

Meanwhile, lean tennis players like Andy Murray can find themselves at their best in competitive sports when the temperature is hotter.

Study: Taller men run faster when temperatures are higher

A new study looking at the performance of professional athletes found that taller men ran faster when temperatures were higher, and shorter, slimmer men performed better when it was cooler.

The study concluded that people are somewhat like animals, which tend to be stockier in cooler regions, such as polar bears, and more slender, such as brown bears, in hotter places - perhaps because this suits the conditions better.

The analysis was conducted on 173 athletes competing in nearly 200 Ironman extreme races over two decades.

And it turns out that the taller and thinner men are about 2.5% faster when temperatures are higher, compared to short men, according to the study's author, Professor Ryan Calsbeck of Dartmouth University in the United States.

This is likely because the body has a larger surface area, so it can dissipate heat from more skin and produce more sweat to cool it.

The effect of temperature on women's running

Women also seemed to run faster in higher temperatures when they had longer legs, but not significantly. This may be because women produce less sweat than men, so having longer legs to sweat than in hot weather makes less of a difference.

Do temperatures only affect running?

The study only found a difference in ultra-running performance, but Professor Kalsbeck said the findings could apply to other sports.

It could mean that summer soccer leagues are getting hotter, and footballers like Manchester City star Erling Haaland and star of Saudi Arabia's Al-Nassr club, Cristiano Ronaldo, may be doing better than Wayne Rooney or Lionel Messi.

Professor Kalsbeck, whose new study has been published in the journal PLOS One, said: 'People attempting a personal best can consider sports venues and average temperatures to choose a venue based on whether they are thin and long-limbed or vice versa. These findings certainly indicate that a tennis player A skinny man like Andy Murray might do better at a warmer US Open than Wimbledon, or a cyclist like Chris Froome might do well if he wanted to run marathons in warm countries.”

The study included nearly 150-mile triathlons in extremely hot locations like Hawaii and South Africa, and cooler countries like Finland and Canada, with extreme temperatures ranging from minus 18 degrees Celsius (64 degrees Fahrenheit) to nearly 39 degrees Celsius (102 degrees Fahrenheit). ), and the research compared athletes' height and digitally measured leg and arm lengths from race photos.

The men were found to be faster at running when temperatures were higher, but not at cycling, which may be less affected by heat due to airflow, or during swimming, which involves wearing a warm suit even when it's cold.

The findings support the 19th-century theories of biologists Carl Bergmann and Joel Asaph Allen that the animals' overall body size, as well as the length and thickness of their limbs, are related to their climate.