During the second game of the first round of the NBA playoffs between Boston Celtics and Brooklyn Nets, on the 20th, an image caught a lot of attention.
After a timeout late in the first quarter, Nets point guard Kyrie Irving left the court. A staff member was pointing at his watch as Irving started toward the locker room, as if to let him know it was time to do something.
Minutes later, the guard returned from inside the arena with a bottle of water and food. He had slept in Boston, where his team was facing the Celtics, that is, the athlete, who fasted for Ramadan, could return to ingesting food and liquids.
Ramadan varies each year on the western calendar. In 2022, it started on April 1st and will end this Sunday, May 1st. Over the course of a month, Muslims are not allowed to eat or drink from sunrise to sunset.
The imposition of this diet is one of the pillars of Islam. A kind of sacrifice during the 30 days in which Muslims believe that the Prophet Muhammad received the revelation of his holy book, the Quran.
There is a lot of debate about the impact that not eating and drinking for a good part of the day can have on elite athletes.
“[O Ramadã] It is a period in which the risk of injury increases, especially in the lower back, joints and muscles,” sports medicine specialist Hakim Chalabi, who worked with Algeria at the 2014 World Cup, told AFP in an interview with AFP. .
“The level of nutrition must change. It is also necessary to modify the quality of food to adapt them to exercise. Players must hydrate better. In addition, we advise you to rest longer in the afternoon, in order to recover part of of sleep time.”
In the NBA itself, center Hakeem Olajuwon, of the Houston Rockets, lived in the 1990s with repeated questions about the effects of fasting on his performance.
In the 1994/95 season, the first in which Olajuwon went on a fast, the Nigerian-American averaged 29 points in the 15 games he played during Ramadan – his regular season average was 27.8. He was still named the best player of February, even with the fasting period having started on the 1st of that month.
In 1997, against Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls, the center recorded one of his great performances when he played 39 minutes and scored 32 points, with four assists, 16 rebounds, five blocks and four steals. The Rockets were missing Charles Barkley, but Olajuwon, fasting, led the team to a 102-86 victory.
The subject tends to have more repercussions on bad presentations than on good ones.
In the game of Day 20, in which he appeared with a banana on the court just after sunset, Kyrie Irving did not have a consistent performance in the Brooklyn Nets’ 114-107 loss to the Boston Celtics, adding just 10 points and an assist. However, in the first match of the series, he had scored 39 points.
His average in his four first-round playoff games against the Celtics was 21.2 points and 5.2 assists. The four losses in a row, which caused the elimination of the Brooklyn team, seem to say more about the team’s malfunction than about the athlete’s performance under fasting.
“It’s a journey. And I’m not alone in this, I have brothers and sisters around the world who are fasting with me. Our prayers and meditations are sacred. When I come here [para a quadra], God is within me. He is within you, within all of us. I’m walking with faith and that’s what matters”, said the point guard, after scoring 34 points in the game against the Cleveland Cavaliers that guaranteed the Nets a place in the playoffs.
This collective faith mentioned by Kyrie Irving, explains Francirosy Campos Barbosa, anthropologist and professor at USP in Ribeirão Preto, is a fundamental part of Ramadan. And that’s where Muslim communities, including amateur or high-level athletes, draw strength to mitigate the possible impacts of fasting.
“People forget the fact of faith. She does it with such devotion that she doesn’t feel the weight of fasting. It’s a force of the collective. Muslims, especially those born into religion, are very used to this diet. elite, he has a nutritionist and a physical trainer who knows exactly what to give him”, says the specialist in Islam, who has been researching the religion for 24 years.
Irving wasn’t the only elite athlete to hydrate during a match this month. In the Bundesliga, Frenchman Moussa Niakhaté, from Mainz 05, took advantage of a break during the clash with Augsburg to drink water and drink liquid supplements, kept next to the goal by his team’s goalkeeper.
The unusual thing about the scene was the fact that the break happened thanks to referee Matthias Jollenbeck, who stopped the game after sunset especially so that Niakhaté could have his breakfast.
The measure had recently been released by the German Federation. Director General of Communications of the Refereeing Committee of Germany, Michael Fröhlich stated that “we support our referees in allowing such hydration breaks during Ramadan at the request of the players”.
Despite the importance of fasting, there are cases, however, where Islam admits exceptions.
Islamic tradition accepts that the sick are exempt from fasting, as are those traveling far from home. This is the case, for example, of those who go to another country to participate in an important sporting event, such as the World Cup.
“According to the Holy Qur’an, God wants ease, not difficulty. If you have a chronic illness and cannot do without insulin, you do not fast, and pay in food for a needy person. A pregnant woman who does not If you’re feeling good, you can eat, drink. Everything has a way for you to pay. I, for example, travel 300 km sometimes, but I don’t break my fast because I feel like I don’t need to. If I needed the ease, I could break it”, completes Francirosy Campos Barbos.
Liverpool star Mohamed Salah broke his Ramadan fast just before the start of the 2018 World Cup when he traveled to Ukraine for the Champions League final between Real Madrid and Liverpool. The most radical credited his injury in that game, which compromised his appearance in the first matches of the Cup, to the interruption of fasting.
Saudi Arabia, one of the most restricted Islamic countries, chose to postpone the Ramadan diet until after the World Cup dispute.
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