Mattis - 'It's all of our responsibilities to fight for a better world'

As a teenager, Sam Mattis always had his finger on the pulse of social and political issues.

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Born in New York and brought up in New Jersey, his mother’s side of the family had fled Europe in the early 1900s due to antisemitism, while his father’s side had found a way out of slavery in Jamaica.

That family history meant Mattis, a two-time Olympian in the discus, has long had an acute awareness of the value of activism. When it came to global warming and climate change, he knew in his youth how big of an issue it was but always felt like “the grown-ups in the room will take care of this”.

But as he says now: “Turns out, that didn’t really happen at all.”

Mattis is one of World Athletics’ Champions for a Better World — athletes who advocate for more sustainable practices in the sport and encourage their peers to take a more active role in addressing environmental concerns. He also sits on World Athletics’ Sustainability Management Review Team and Steering Group, bringing the athletes’ voice to that decision-making table.

Through his personal experience and via stories from his peers, he knows sport is not incubated from the effects of climate change. “It’s a lot harder to be consistent throughout the year with our workouts, whether it’s forest fires and having more difficulty breathing because of the smoke, or extreme heat and changes in the weather,” he says. “Last year, when Canada had those massive wildfires, a lot of the smoke blew down to where I’m at in Pennsylvania, we also had a couple fires two miles from where I train, and that made practice really, really difficult.”

He believes the dial is shifting among athletes when it comes to awareness of the climate crisis.

“Most of our championships the last few years have come during extreme heat events,” he says. “There's a broad acknowledgement of climate change making things difficult and I think the next step is getting people to communicate that to people who follow them and trying to get their organisations and (national governing bodies) to take action.”