Cycling’s governing body the UCI has admitted high temperatures could lead to races at next week’s Road World Championships in Qatar being drastically reduced in length.

This is despite already putting the event back to its latest ever date – three weeks later than last year’s championships – to avoid Qatar’s brutal September heat.

With temperatures forecast to reach 37 degrees Celsius in the capital city Doha, the UCI has set up a four-man panel to assess the conditions before each of the 12 events over the week’s racing.

Using “thermal stress indicators” and precise forecasts, these four experts, three of whom are based at Qatar’s Aspetar sports science centre, will decide if any of the events need to be shortened with input from the presidents of the UCI’s athletes’ commission and commissaires panel.

If they decide to implement cycling’s “extreme weather protocol”, which was introduced this year to bring some common sense to decisions on whether riders should race through the snow in the mountains or sandstorms in the desert, the men’s road race on October 16 could be more than halved in distance.

Currently, the race is supposed to comprise a 151km loop through the desert to the north of Doha, before returning to the city to complete seven 15.3km laps of the Pearl, an artificial island off the city’s West Bay that is home to skyscrapers, five-star hotels and luxury shopping malls.

If it is too hot, however, that desert loop will be dropped, turning what should be one of the hardest one-day challenges of the season at 257.3km into a short race on a city circuit already infamous for its 24 roundabouts.

The women’s race on Saturday is meant to be a 28-kilometre ride through Doha before seven laps of the Pearl. However, extreme heat could see the number of those laps cut, with similar reductions made for the age-group road races and time trials.