Champions Trophy: British women fight the climate in Argentina

“I’m confident that the heat is not going to become a factor for us,” he says, “because of the way we’ve prepared ourselves. Not just this year, but last year and the year before. That will not become one of the variables that determines the outcome of a game.

“We try to keep everything as consistent as possible. We have recovery protocols that we’ve always used for all our tournaments and they don’t change. Those are geared towards relaxing the girls.

“And behind that is long-term development, over three or four years, building on the work capacity of the squad. That can’t be done with just one year’s training, it has to be multiple years completed and that’s where I believe our advantage potentially lies over other nations.”

Having roasted in their matches against Japan and the Netherlands, temperatures dipped for Britain’s third and final group game versus China and are set to remain in the comparatively mild mid-20s for their quarter-final with South Korea on Thursday.

However, the forecast for the weekend – when Britain will definitely be back out on the pitch, whether playing for gold or seventh place – rockets back into the high 30s and beyond.

The vast majority of the team were brought to Argentina two weeks ahead of the competition in order to acclimatise to the conditions, playing a warm-up event in Cordoba – a five-hour bus trip away – where early-evening games provided an ideal introduction to Argentine heat.

Four players, though, were left to continue training in Britain before joining their counterparts for the Champions Trophy. Those four made use of a sophisticated climate chamber to replicate the same conditions.

“We had the main group going to Cordoba but for the four coming out later, we used the acclimation chamber at Bisham Abbey national sports centre,” explains Hamilton.

“We put them in a room, took it to the same environment they’ll play in here, then got them doing activities that replicate hockey match-play. They did that for a number of days.”