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Canadian cyclist Svein Tuft heard all about the trifecta of terror awaiting athletes in Beijing — sinister heat, soul-sapping humidity and smog-shrouded air.

"The pollution, you can never really prepare yourself for," said the 31-year-old road cyclist from Langley, B.C., who will be racing 245.4 kilometres on a course that ends at the Badaling section of China's Great Wall.

Beijing's one-of-a-kind environment, the talk of the athletic world for more than a year, presents what could be the most physically challenging Summer Games in Olympic history. Researchers, specialists and equipment makers worldwide have designed high-tech devices such as ice vests and cooling gloves to combat the heat and breathing masks and mouthpieces to filter out harmful air particles.

The extent of the innovation is above and beyond the usual advances, such as reworked track shoes (American Jeremy Wariner's shoe is designed to compensate for the left curve in the track, much like the suspension system used in oval-track race cars), lighter javelins (through an aluminum, carbon-woven process) and swimsuits so state-of-the-lab, they were tested by NASA scientists.

"Everything gets more sophisticated," Canadian track and field coach Les Gramantik said. "We all want that edge."

Beijing, one of the most polluted places on the planet, has generated a torrent of pre-Olympic fears. Haile Gebrselassie of Ethiopia, who'd been favoured to win the men's marathon, made headlines and embarrassed Games organizers this year when he dropped out of his specialty race because of concerns about exercise-induced asthma. He will, however, compete in the 10,000-metre race.

Tuft prepared by spending July in the scorching heat of Kamloops, then jetting to Kyoto, Japan, for more training. He planned to arrive in Beijing only a few days before his road race this Saturday. His strategy: spare his lungs from inhaling any more smog than necessary.

"You don't want to be spending too much time in that kind of environment," he said.

Organizers spent 10 years and $17-billion (all currency U.S.) trying to reduce air-pollution readings, only to see pictures of a hazy Beijing beamed around the world last week. Smoking was banned in most public places in the northern capital, even though about one-quarter of the city's 17 million people have a nicotine habit. Construction work was curbed or halted. Heavy-polluting companies were told to slash emissions or be forced out of the city. Almost half of Beijing's 3.3 million vehicles have been taken off the roads through government-induced emergency measures, and there was talk of removing all of them.

One old nemesis for Olympic organizers raised its head yesterday morning when a thick blanket of smog drew a grey curtain across the blue sky of the two previous days. The sun, which had shone bright and yellow on Sunday, looked an eerie blood red.

The humid 34-degree weather meant dry clothes were quickly drenched with sweat after only a short walk.

Officials are also trying to harness the weather with what is thought to be the largest cloud-seeding system in the world. Aircraft and rockets will send silver iodide pellets into approaching clouds to remove humidity and induce rainfall far from Olympic venues as a way to help clear smog.

Despite a dramatic increase in the number of blue-sky days in the city — 246 a year from 100 in the previous decade — Beijing is being criticized for failing to meet World Health Organization standards for air quality. As Canadian race walker Tim Berrett recently lamented, "Other than pulling my treadmill into the garage, starting the car and hoping I come out two hours later, there isn't really a lot I can do to get ready for it."

Murray Finkelstein, a smog researcher and physician at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, expects the pollution to have an adverse effect on athletes' results.

"I wouldn't be surprised if it would knock a little bit out of their performance," Finkelstein said. "If they're racing around … on really smoggy days, I would not be surprised if no world records are set [at outdoor events]."

Jon Kolb disagrees. The University of Calgary environmental physiologist, who is working for the Canadian Olympic Committee, has been to Beijing four times and spent last August taking pollution readings.

"I did quite a bit of data on particulate matter and pollutants and the pulmonary function test [conducted on several Canadian athletes in Beijing]," Kolb said. "That checks a person's ability to expand air [and transfer oxygen to the lungs]. … We didn't find any fall in the pulmonary function test and we weren't the only ones who found this. There was an article in the British Medical Journal about a New Zealand group [of researchers] that did measurements in Beijing. They found the air particulate levels high, but they didn't see a fall in the pulmonary function test, either.

"I think [the pollution woes have] been a little bit overdone by the media."

Kolb and others have been taking a not-as-bad-as-it-seems approach to alleviate any psychological impact on Canadian team members heading to the once forbidden city. By comparison, Britain has flip-flopped on whether its athletes should wear protective masks in Beijing (the word now is no), while New Zealand and Japan issued masks to all athletes as standard equipment.

Most assuredly, athletes with asthmatic conditions and allergies will be at risk, which is why the International Olympic Committee has reportedly been inundated with applications from athletes wishing to use asthma medication that would normally be banned as a performance-enhancing drug. The IOC has granted therapeutic-use exemptions to athletes in a variety of sports from middle-distance to long-distance running, cycling and even field hockey.

While experts debate just how serious the pollution problem is, there is no disagreement when it comes to Beijing's heat and humidity. Both can be stunningly oppressive (Beijing's average August temperature is 24.9 with a relative humidity of 77 per cent, making the conditions more severe than in Athens four years ago).

"Pollution is getting all the publicity," said Randy Wilber, the senior sports physiologist for the U.S. Olympic Committee. "But we're sending the message loud and clear that it's important not to get distracted from the real environmental factor likely to detract from performance: the heat and humidity."

The Washington Post reported that a team of scientists had prepared a 28-page manual on how athletes can best handle Beijing's conditions, but the USOC declined to say what was involved, because of "competitive concerns." It's the same story for the British Olympic Association, which borrowed top-secret techniques from military and aerospace experts in an attempt to beat the heat.

Some Canadian cyclists will be using lightweight, breathable gear made by Louis Garneau, designed to help them cope with high temperatures. U.S. BMX riders will be wearing high-tech "zoned venting" leathers designed by Nike to keep them cool when the cycling sport makes its debut.

Cooling vests, made by New Jersey-based Arctic Heat, were used by several countries at the Athens Games in 2004 and will be among the featured gear of the Australian team in Beijing. The vests, some filled with water that can be turned to ice or with a gel-like substance that can be frozen, are designed to delay the effects of overheating by precooling the athlete's body. It means less sweat and a lower heart rate and that allows athletes to train harder and longer in high-heat conditions.

"Some of us have already used the ice vests that kind of help precool you a little bit before the race, to fend off the heat for the first bit," Canadian mountain biker Geoff Kabush said. "[Athletes are also] working with cool drinks and strategies, throwing cold water on ourselves and anything basically to try and keep the body temperature down. It's going to be pretty extreme heat."

That's the grim news. The good, cyclist Tuft said, is that Beijing's intimidating clime is likely to thin the road race field of 145 men to those who most want to win.

"It could be the kind of thing where it finishes somewhat like a triathlon, guys just coming in minutes apart from each other and 30 finishers," Tuft said. "I don't know if it's necessarily a good thing, but everyone's on the same page."

And they're holding their breath in anticipation.

With a report from The Canadian Press