Saimoni Vuniragi, 26, a Fijian rugby player competing in Japan's second-division league, died Friday morning at a hospital in Fukuoka, Japanese media including Sponichi Annex reported Saturday.
According to his club, Kyushu Electric Power Kyuden Voltex, Vuniragi had recently transferred from top-division side Tokyo SG and joined the team on July 23. He stood 196 centimeters tall and weighed 117 kilograms, playing as a lock forward.
Team training began at 4:50 p.m. Monday at a ground in Fukuoka. The city's high temperature that day reached 36.9 degrees Celsius, and a heatstroke alert had been issued.
The Mainichi Shimbun reported that the temperature during training was 35 degrees Celsius. After completing a running drill, Vuniragi was seen staggering, prompting the team to immediately halt the session. Medical staff administered fluids and applied ice packs.
He was initially able to respond to questions but soon lost consciousness and was rushed by ambulance to a hospital in the city. Doctors later notified the club that heatstroke was the cause of death.
Weather forecaster Yonetsu Ryuichi wrote in a comment on a related article on the Japanese portal Yahoo Japan that the Wet Bulb Globe Temperature index — which measures heatstroke risk — exceeded 34 at the time, surpassing the highest danger threshold of 31. "Even in the evening, temperatures were above 34 degrees Celsius with humidity in the 60 percent range, making conditions extremely oppressive," he wrote. "Furthermore, that temperature was measured in the shade, so conditions on the playing field would have been even hotter. Under the Environment Ministry's guidelines, exercise should in principle be suspended when the index exceeds 31."
The Wet Bulb Globe Temperature, or WBGT, is an index jointly registered with ISO by the World Meteorological Organization and WHO. It reflects not only air temperature but also humidity, solar radiation and wind speed to indicate the risk of heatstroke.
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