2024 Olympics: USWNT struggles in scorching heat that was ‘perfect preparation’ for France

U.S. women’s national team midfielder Sam Coffey battles Costa Rica in the USWNT’s final match before the 2024 Paris Olympics. Temperatures in Washington D.C., the site of the game, topped 100 degrees Tuesday. (Photo by Mitchell Leff/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. women’s national soccer team spent their last three pre-Olympic days struggling and sweating through 100-degree weather in Washington D.C. They failed to beat Costa Rica here on Tuesday night, drawing their send-off match 0-0. They also sprayed themselves with water bottles, and wrapped their heads in towels, in the thick of a heat wave sweeping the United States.

It was, on one hand, a brutal experience.

“It was really hot,” midfielder Sam Coffey said with an exhausted sigh. “It was tough.”

“The last two games have been insane,” defender Casey Krueger said, referencing Saturday afternoon’s game in New Jersey.

It was, on the other hand, “perfect preparation for Marseille,” head coach Emma Hayes said, and players agreed.

The USWNT will fly to France on Wednesday. A week later, the team will kick off an Olympics that, for months, have been trailed by concerns related to heat. On July 25, the date of the USWNT opener, temperatures in Paris over the past six years have ranged from the 60s to 109 degrees. In three of the six years, temps have topped 90.

In 2024, so far, the Parisian summer has been milder. Current forecasts project a high of around 75 throughout next week, when the Olympics begin.

Neither U.S. soccer team, though, will be in Paris, unless they reach gold-medal finals. Both the men and women will be down on France’s south coast, in Nice and Marseille, for the group stage. In Nice, temperatures are expected to rise above 90 this coming weekend, and into the high 80s next Thursday, when the USWNT plays Zambia.

In Marseille, where the U.S. men play France next Wednesday, the projected high is 91. The women travel to Marseille for Games 2 and 3. “It’s pretty hot down there,” Hayes said Monday.

Their games will all kick off at 7 or 9 p.m. local time. They will train, though, closer to the middle of the day.

“So,” Hayes said here before her team trained Monday on a 99-degree afternoon exacerbated by scorching sun, “this is a great opportunity for us to experience what we’re going to face.”

Twenty-eight hours later, their final friendly before the Games was a slog. At kickoff, the temperature was 95 degrees. As captain Lindsey Horan prepared to step into a pregame huddle, she showered her face with water; her nose dripped as she began to speak to teammates.

The match was slow, largely because Costa Rica made it slow. The visitors’ low-block, defensive approach made Tuesday’s battle much less physically intense than the ones the U.S. women will encounter in Paris.

Still, players were drenched in sweat. They came to get water during a mid-first-half injury stoppage. During an official “hydration break” less than 10 minutes later, several draped towels around their necks; Emily Fox grabbed a second towel and wiped her face; Coffey wrapped her towel around her entire head.

“I mean, thank God that the sun started to go down,” Coffey later said.

Rose Lavelle didn’t even make it through warmups. She was slated to start, but was then removed from the lineup due to groin tightness. It’s unclear how much, if at all, the tightness or the decision to take “no risks,” as Hayes said, was due to the conditions. (The pitch at Audi Field was also dreadful.)

As for the game, the USWNT was unimaginative. It dominated, as expected, with roughly 80% possession and plenty of opportunities. But it lacked precision in the final third, and will head to the Olympics having scored just one goal in two tune-ups against inferior opposition.

It won’t face teams like Costa Rica in France, though. The most analogous aspect of Tuesday — and of a 1-0 win over Mexico last weekend in Harrison, New Jersey — was probably the temperature.

“These,” Coffey said of the experience playing in heat, “are great preparation moments for us going to the south of France.”