Bolivia moves World Cup qualifier to higher altitude to elevate performance | Hacker News Reader

Bolivia moves World Cup qualifier to higher altitude to elevate performance

apnews.com

21 pointswawayanda12 comments

> The Bolivians usually play in the capital La Paz at 3,640 meters (11,940 feet) above sea level, but the South American soccer body CONMEBOL has allowed them to move their games to El Alto, the second largest city in the country at an altitude of 4,150 meters (13,615 feet).

Oh wow, I can't believe they're actually allowing this move. The World Cup teams are going to have a hell of a time training for that altitude. I wonder if a few months of acclimation right before the Cup will be enough for trained athletes or if they'll all have to train for a while at altitude. I wonder how many countries even have a place to train within their borders.

~4,000 meters is easily high enough for an unacclimated person to get serious high altitude sickness. I had to get carried down the side of a mountain on a stretcher when I got sick camping at the Palisade Glaciers (just under 4,300m) despite having done several Mt Whitney hikes to acclimate that year. I'd hate to think what it would have been like if I had been physically exerting myself in a game of foodball.

Not to mention members of the audience!

This is only for a single qualifying match against Venezuela, the cup isn’t until 2026 hosted in the US, Mexico, and Canada.

CONMEBOL is a joke as far as competitive standards go, FIFA isn’t much better but would still never allow this in a proper WC.

Doing somewhat serious sports in high school, I always grumbled about competing vs the national team people in their home turf (6k feet in Colorado Springs). They'd destroy you at sea level as it was, and sucking wind at altitude once you got overworked, it was just another level of unfair.

I can't imagine going in at over 13k feet. Wtf. That's higher than the day hiking on Rainier here, and you get some serious headaches if you go at usual pace without acclimating.

I'd imagine at that level they'll have access to altitude tents to try and adjust. But I do wonder how effective those would be, since you only sleep in them.

This is silly and dangerous. Tha Bolivian team has never shown enough quality to justify being able to impose this sort of thing.

I just hope nobody gets hurt.

The other teams can just copy cycling and use carbon monoxide training to prepare.

Just another example of FIFA's absurd corruption. They know altitude is unfair and they allow increasing it unnecessarily to unreasonable heights.

Honestly? Good for them. You think every other national team isn't exploiting absolutely every advantage they have access to?

Perú has a field at like 5000 meters that requires ten hours of bus drive to get there. Maybe we will force teams to do that?

Or maybe Colombia will require them to play in the jungle? Or Argentina will go back to giving you food that makes you sick at the hotel?

There's a thing called fair play, and this thing pushes it. Bolivia's nonsense is a real health hazard

> Or maybe Colombia will require them to play in the jungle?

We don't have any stadiums in the jungle, that's Brazil - the one they did for the 2014 world cup.

Lionel Scaloni, coach of Argentina, recently decried the incoming match against Colombia that is to be held in Barranquilla, which is almost at sea level, because "it's so hot in there". Maybe he thinks it would be much easier at the altitude of El Alto stadium.

"Don't worry, it's still a level playing-field. Technically."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com