Tennis star leaves court in wheelchair amid 'brutal' Tokyo heat

Between record-breaking performances and awe-inspiring feats of athleticism, the "brutal" heat beating down on Olympians at the Tokyo Games has garnered more headlines than the athletes would hope.

"I can finish the match but I can die," Russian tennis player Daniil Medvedev told an umpire on Wednesday. "If I die, are you going to be responsible?"

After honing forehands, backhands and overhead strikes for years, tennis stars like Medvedev and the legendary Novak Djokavic are struggling to return Mother Nature's most brutal serve: sweltering heat.

"The conditions are brutal," Djokovic, the No.1 seeded player at the Games, told The Associated Press. "I've played tennis professionally now 20 years, and I've never faced this kind of conditions in my entire life on a consecutive daily basis."

Jeremy Chardy, of France, cools off during a quarterfinal men's tennis match against Alexander Zverev, of Germany, at the 2020 Summer Olympics, Thursday, July 29, 2021, in Tokyo, Japan. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

Medvedev, the No. 2 seeded player, struggled mightily with the heat during his Wednesday match against Italy's Fabio Fognini, going as far to say that he "had darkness" in his eyes.

While Medvedev managed to finish and win his match, Spain's Paula Badosa wasn't so lucky in hers.

Battling Czech Marketa Vondrousova, Badosa bowed out of the competition following a long medical timeout and needing to leave the court via wheelchair.

Paula Badosa, of Spain, is helped off the court in a wheelchair after retiring due to illness during the quarterfinals of the tennis competition at the 2020 Summer Olympics, Wednesday, July 28, 2021, in Tokyo, Japan. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

She told Reuters after the match that she suffered heatstroke.

"It's a shame to end my participation in this way," said Badosa. "It's been a tough ask since day one, we tried to adapt as best we could, but today my body hasn't held up as it needed to."

The frustrated athletes cast much of the blame on the unhelpful start times for the matches. Medvedev's match with Fognini started at 11:08 a.m., local time, and ended just after 1:30 p.m., the hottest time of the day.

According to AccuWeather Meteorologist Mary Gilbert, the AccuWeather RealFeel® Temperatures started at 88 degrees at 11 a.m. and peaked at 97 degrees by 1 p.m.

"I don't understand why they don't start matches at, say, 3 p.m.," Djokovic said earlier in the Olympics, according to NPR. "We still have seven hours to play. They have lights on all the courts."

Daniil Medvedev, of the Russian Olympic Committee, wipes sweat from his face during a quarterfinal men's tennis match against Pablo Carreno Busta, of Spain, at the 2020 Summer Olympics, Thursday, July 29, 2021, in Tokyo, Japan. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

In response to Wednesday's unplayable conditions, Olympic officials and the International Tennis Federation followed that suggestion and announced that matches wouldn't start any earlier than 3 p.m. on Thursday.

The difference was immediately felt, with RealFeel® Temperatures starting at 90 degrees at 3 p.m. and dropping to 87 by 5 p.m. on Thursday. Had start times remained at 11 a.m., Gilbert said Thursday's weather for matches would have been even hotter than it was on Wednesday, with a RealFeel® of 98 at 11 a.m. and a peak of 99 at 1:30 p.m.

Djokovic, the heavy favorite to win gold, told ESPN that his Thursday play was his "best performance" yet and added that the adjusted start time was far friendlier to play in.

"It was fantastic. Playing after five is completely different," he told CNN. "Obviously, there is a little bit of a breeze, but still very, very humid, you sweat a lot, but you don't have the heat, you don't have the sun that in combination with the humidity. It's just brutal."

Novak Djokovic, of Serbia, plays Kei Nishikori, of Japan, during the quarterfinals of the tennis competition at the 2020 Summer Olympics, Thursday, July 29, 2021, in Tokyo, Japan. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Olympic athletes set to compete in the coming week have the advantage of learning from their fellow athletes' hardships. Innovative ideas, from gear tweaks to solar-blocking paint, have gone to new measures this year to protect athletes from letting their lifetime accomplishments get spoiled by the conditions.

Racewalkers from the Japanese team have employed a strategy of covering their hands and wrists in ice, a strategy that helped Hirooki Arai become the first Japanese racewalker to earn an Olympic medal at the 2016 Summer Olympics.

Japan's Hirooki Arai celebrates when crossing the line and winning the silver medal in the men's 50-kilometer race walk during the World Athletics Championships in London Sunday, Aug. 13, 2017. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner)

Masaaki Sugita, the chairman of the Japan Association of Athletics Federations, told The Mainichi in 2018 that the strategy of utilizing a hand-cooling device eventually led to the team developing a product called CoreControl.

CoreControl targets the palms of hands, which have arterio-venous anastomoses (AVAs), which connect arteries with veins. When the palms are cooled, AVAs open up and release large volumes of cooled blood back into the body, lowering both the body temperature and heart rate.

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"Measures against the heat will be crucial in the Tokyo Olympics," Arai said during training. "What may seem like slight ingenuity can make a huge difference."

Azalea flowers bloom along the fence outside the Japan National Stadium, where opening and closing ceremonies and other events for Tokyo 2020 Olympics will be held, Tuesday, April 6, 2021, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato)

The city of Tokyo itself has also been tapping into that ingenuity to manage the dangerous temperatures. One such solution that has worked successfully has been solar-blocking paint.

According to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, the paint has helped deflect sunlight from the pavement in the city, lowering surface temperatures by up to 46 degrees Fahrenheit, BBC reported. The paint was originally developed by NASA to keep astronauts cool in spacecraft.

Another innovative tweak from the city was to design the Japan National Stadium using more wood and natural resources, in order to reduce heat absorption and facilitate airflow.

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