"Players have to drink hot water": Jack Draper hits out at brutal conditions after Olympic Games defeat to Taylor Fritz

Jack Draper has hit out at the conditions after his second round defeat to Taylor Fritz at the 2024 Olympic Games.

With temperatures breaching 30, Draper said that players were forced to drink hot water and spent changeovers filling bottles instead of resting. Draper went one set up against the seventh seed but folded as he was covering his face with an ice pack during changeovers. He lost out 6-7, 6-3, 6-2 in favour of Fritz.

He couldn't rest at all though with the changeovers being used trying to access water that couldn't be given to players. He called out organisers saying that it was simply not 'good enough'.

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"I mean it was tough conditions, there’s no doubt about it, I need to play more in this sort of heat and obviously going to America I’ll get more used to that," said Draper.

"I mean, look, a part of it is physicality but I just think it’s - I said to the referee, it’s pretty poor that the players have to drink hot water when we’re playing in those conditions. We did have ice towels and stuff but usually it’s important that we have good fridges to keep our water cool but it’s so tough to recover when you’re just not replenishing properly and all those sorts of things. There’s no escape from the heat. Even at the change of ends, there’s no escape from it. So it was difficult."

"You can refill [the bottles] but when we’re at the change of ends, we’re playing such tough points and we’re running around in the heat and we’re trying our best and at the change of ends, I ended up not sitting down anymore because I was refilling the drinks. Like, I want to sit down."

Jack Draper let rip on organisers due to warm water.

"If we could put it in a fridge. Like it’s tough having to keep refilling the bottles ourselves. At all other tournaments you can maybe get the water out the fridge, US Open there’s maybe a fridge with ice, there’s a cooler or something. It felt like, on the court especially, I don’t know if it’s normal that court doesn’t have any shelter so even when the umbrella is on, the legs are in the sun. Like, everything. It just felt like there was no escape from it and I think a lot of it is obviously physicality and getting used to it but I just think it’s pretty poor that they put the players through that on court."

"It’s a plastic box with like a water fountain in there. This is what I’m saying, you can get water from there and it’s a bit cooler because it’s in the box but we shouldn’t have to fill our water up every change of ends.

"We need to sit down. It’s not good enough that you’ve got people out in the crowd, they must be thinking, what’s going on? Because they’re struggling just watching it sitting down let alone playing and when you’ve got to then stand up in between the change of ends to fill up your water, I just don’t think it’s good enough."

"I mean you’ve got to play in it. This match is probably good for me today to then hopefully be better in America," he said.

"It’s kind of just a shock to the system when you’re all of a sudden put in extreme heat and I think especially people don’t see sometimes like a lot of players don’t sweat too much and so they don’t struggle as mich. Whereas the people who are losing so much water and stuff, it’s so tough to replenish and we struggle a lot more. So all of that stuff around the drinks and the cooling and all that sort of stuff is so important."

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