Live updates: Tokyo Olympics: NPR

Russia’s Daniil Medvedev will return the ball to Italian Fabio Fognin in their third-round match on Wednesday at the Tokyo Olympics.

Giuseppe Cacace / AFP via Getty Images

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Giuseppe Cacace / AFP via Getty Images

Russia’s Daniil Medvedev will return the ball to Italian Fabio Fognin in their third-round match on Wednesday at the Tokyo Olympics.

Giuseppe Cacace / AFP via Getty Images

On Wednesday, the heat in Tokyo was so intense that Spanish tennis player Paula Badosa suffered a heat stroke in her quarter-final against Marketa Vondrousova and withdrew from the match, leaving the field in a wheelchair.

Another player, Russian Daniil Medvedev, tried to breathe one of his matches from the hot and humid conditions. He told the chair referee: “I can finish the match, but I can die.”

Officials from the World Tennis Administration say they will start Olympic tennis competitions later in the day to avoid some of Tokyo’s outdoor temperatures.

International Tennis Federation announced that from the beginning of Thursday the tennis matches of the Tokyo Games will start at 3 pm local time, when temperatures will usually start to cool down in Tokyo instead of 11 am.

The decision was possible “due to the results of today’s matches during the five competitions to be held and the size of the player field, and is designed to protect the health of the players,” the governing body said.

Spain’s Paula Badosa will be helped out of the field in a wheelchair after he retires due to illness on Wednesday in the semi-finals of the Tokyo Olympics tennis competitions.

Seth Wenig / AP

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Seth Wenig / AP

Spain’s Paula Badosa will be helped out of the field in a wheelchair after he retires due to illness on Wednesday in the semi-finals of the Tokyo Olympics tennis competitions.

Seth Wenig / AP

The change in schedule came after several players complained that high temperatures and humidity affected their ability to compete.

Medvedev and Serbian tennis star Novak Djokovic had previously criticized ITF that it did not push start times later to improve player conditions.

“I don’t understand why they don’t start matches like 3pm,” Djokovic said last week. “We still have seven hours to play. They have lights on all the fields.”

The ITF said at the time that the decision to start the matches at 11 a.m. was based on “data, a nine-day event, and to take into account factors such as local government constraints caused by Covid-19 and weather unpredictability.”

This year’s Olympics and Paralympics are expected to be among the hottest races of all time, due in part to high humidity and a “heat island” that captures heat in large urban areas such as Tokyo. Daily temperatures are expected in the 80s and low 90s throughout games, but with humidity it can feel more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit.