How do athletes use the bathroom during gameplay?

In most baseball stadiums, there is a small bathroom right behind the dugout, for exactly the reason you note. When your team is up to bat, you can be peeing.

My guess is that in football, basketball, and soccer, you pee before the game begins, and then again at half time.

I can not remember an athletic contest (football or basketball for me) when I was in school where I actually had to go to the bathroom during the game.
We were probably dehydrated

I don’t know if it’s due to the length of the play time, but there seems to be an attitude in futbol/soccer to do it on the field and hope it doesn’t cost a red card.

But I guess it happens in football too!

There are instances where football players will pee behind a structure off in the corner of the sideline.

On the Tour de France, there will be spots along the road where a lot of riders pull over and pee, or even poop. Other riders, especially if on a long breakaway, will pee while riding on the bike. The camera people know to not broadcast them then.

I recall footage of a marathon runner who was scooping out poo out of his shorts, while running.
That was televised.

Edit: Do NOT Google.

They wear front end depends. LOL

Gatorade bottle, maybe?

I know that in football games they pee on the sidelines, or in a circle of players. Sometimes, they’ll hold a towel up, as a barrier. Mostly it’s not a issue. As @josie mentioned, there’s usually a hydration issue.

http://imgur.com/BG28u4q

@Lightlyseared – nasty

It’s actually quite common for long distance runners to shit themselves.

Gives a whole new meaning to “I got the ‘runs.”~

Most probably know their bodies well enough that they typically only eat certain meals right before a game and know how to time it so that pooping isn’t really an issue during the game. As for urinating, they’re likely to become dehydrated during the course of the game that it’s not much of an issue ether. Otherwise, they’ll typically have bathrooms close by and there’s plenty of breaks in gameplay. For auto racers, however, it’s a different story. They have to sit in those cars for hours, no breaks, no time-outs. But again, they tend to sweat so much that they dehydrate and peeing isn’t an issue. On the rare occasion that they do have to pee during a race they’ll just let it flow. Those firesuits they wear become so soaked with sweat anyway they they can’t really tell a difference. The dehydration is such an issue for those guys that it’s not unheard of for a racer to get IV fluids right after a race.

You will never witness looser “relieving yourself” rules than during the running of a marathon.

We ran the Disney World Marathon in 2003, 2004 and 2005. On any other day, if one person tried to openly relieve themselves on Disney property, they would be in handcuffs in 30 seconds or less

Only during the marathon will you see a dozen people lined up beside each other in broad daylight, peeing into the bushes, and everything’s cool with Security (and all of the runners going by).

There was one guy defecting in the bushes wearing a Goofy hat with twinkling Christmas lights wrapped around it (the marathon is run in early January), something you would likely see only once in a lifetime.

My wife saw one young female runner on a bridge jump onto a stone wall and “moon” all of the cars passing by underneath (again, untamed jubulance probably witnessed only once-in-a-lifetime…).

In football they just wet themselves.