The Tokyo Olympics proceed to be an unmitigated local weather catastrophe. It was so scorching and humid on Wednesday that Russian tennis participant Daniil Medvedev thought he may die.

“I’m a fighter, I will finish the match, but I can die,” he told the umpire throughout a match on the Ariake Tennis Park. “If I die, is the [International Tennis Federation] going to take responsibility?”

It was 88 levels Fahrenheit (31 levels Celsius) on the courtroom, however the warmth index made it really feel like 99 levels Fahrenheit (37 levels Celsius). Those are lower than best circumstances for any outside exercise. But for an Olympic tennis match, they’re brutal—even dangerous.

Shortly afterward, the International Tennis Federation introduced that tennis matches will now begin at 3 p.m. as an alternative of 11 a.m. to keep away from the most popular and most humid climate. In a statement, officers mentioned they made the decision “in the interests of player health and welfare and following extensive consultation.”

Later the identical day, Spanish tennis participant Paula Badosa left the courtroom in a wheelchair, affected by heatstroke. She was pressured to retire from her girls’s singles quarterfinal match towards the Czech Republic’s Marketa Vondrousova.

After the match was over, Vondrousova admitted that she’d been capable of face up to the warmth solely as a result of she’s taking particular precautions. “In the match, I use the ice towels and also use the air tube,” she said in comments posted by Olympics officers. After a first-round match, star participant Novak Djokovic mentioned the warmth was “brutal.” Multiple contestants collapsed on the observe in the course of the males’s triathlong, displaying Wednesday wasn’t merely an remoted day of maximum circumstances or a single occasion.

Long earlier than the video games started, officers knew that this 12 months’s Olympics had been going to be scorching. Climate change has made excessive warmth extra widespread and intense. Making issues worse is that Tokyo is a heat island. Its tall buildings and plentiful pavement lure warmth, and there’s barely any inexperienced area to supply shade.

Earlier this week, it was revealed that in its bid to host the Olympics, Tokyo wasn’t precisely upfront concerning the potential risks warmth may pose. In a 2020 bid document, the town assured the International Olympic Committee that “with many days of mild and sunny weather, this period provides an ideal climate for athletes to perform their best.” The metropolis’s temperatures have trended upward.

Organizers took some precautions within the weeks earlier than the video games, together with putting in shade tents, transportable air con models, ice baths, coolers stuffed with chilly water bottles, and misting followers in designated competitors arenas. They additionally moved some occasions to the town of Sapporo, which is about 500 miles (805 kilometers) north of Tokyo and is usually barely cooler.

This isn’t the primary sporting occasion to be marred by the local weather disaster. The 2014 Australia Open noticed temperatures so excessive that water bottles melted and gamers collapsed. Last 12 months, the occasion was besieged by bushfire smoke that brought about gamers to wrestle to breathe. And in 2018, Cal and Stanford postponed their historic rivalry soccer recreation as California was smothered by the most poisonous air on Earth tied to wildfires burning within the state.

Still, the Tokyo Olympics have been their very own particular sort of hell. Between surging covid-19 instances and a typhoon hitting the beach the place surfers had been competing, this years Olympics appear cursed.