Coughing, vomiting, relocating: Air pollution takes toll on Indian athletes as foreign players flag issue to International Olympic Committee

* Decathlete Tejaswin Shankar said winter training in Delhi is no longer about grit, but pollution. Shankar, who hails from Delhi, left in November to train in Bhubaneswar first, South Africa later and the US now. The “extremely difficult” summer brings no relief. “There are real physiological costs for athletes in Delhi,” he said.

* At the premier National Institute of Sport in Patiala, the talk is more about “unbearable summers”. “It becomes difficult to even stand outside in the heat for five minutes,” former Olympic and world champion Neeraj Chopra had said earlier. Training in such conditions, he had said, was “extremely difficult”.

For foreign sportspersons touring India, the risk is occasional — and one they can choose to avoid, as Denmark shuttler Anders Antonsen did at the India Open. There is no such luxury for Indian athletes. Their exposure is constant, and the cost cumulative.

As the country makes a pitch for the 2036 Olympics, The Indian Express spoke to coaches and athletes from a wide range of sports — boxing, wrestling, athletics and para-athletics, cycling, shooting and hockey — to understand the impact of the toxic winter air and long summers that push temperatures towards 50 degrees Celsius, on health and training.

The answer was unanimous: these conditions are dismantling their carefully planned training cycles — not through a sudden collapse but slow, relentless erosion.

Dr Randeep Guleria, the former chief of AIIMS, warned that exercising in polluted air “puts extra strain on the lungs, reduces exercise capacity” and can also affect the heart and brain. His prescription is blunt. “Ideally, they will need a base camp in a region where they can train safely — possibly outside central India, because the air quality is bad in the Indo-Gangetic belt,” he said.

However, some of India’s premier elite and grassroots institutions are located in and around this region. There is NIS in Patiala, the apex sports education and training centre. There are the National Centres of Excellence for Olympic disciplines in Sonepat, Rohtak, Chandigarh, Lucknow and New Delhi. Venues in the capital, such as Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, Dr Karni Singh Shooting Range and Indira Gandhi Sports Complex, also host international events.

For decades, these sporting facilities have served as nurseries for champions and hopefuls: nine out of India’s 13 medallists at the last two Olympics have trained at these centres.

‘Dark clouds make us happy’

The shrinking window for effective outdoor training comes at a time when India is pushing to host the 2036 Olympics. The Sports Ministry has roped in legendary athletes to overhaul coaching systems, professionalise administration and roll out a 10-year roadmap targeting 12-14 gold medals. The vision also includes a Rs 1,500-Rs 2,000 crore makeover of the NIS and establishing an Olympic Training Centre for each sport.

And yet, as coaches and athletes point out, one critical factor is being overlooked.

The number of months in which athletes can train without worrying about the weather has shrunk to just “two or three in a year”, says hockey coach Siwach, who is also a former India captain. “Even that is not continuous… 15-20 days in one month, 15-20 days more sometime later. When we see dark clouds over our heads, we are happy because it means rain and fresh air,” she said.

In 2024, Delhi and adjoining regions saw their longest spell of extreme heat in 74 years, with temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius for over a month. From June to August, temperatures ranged between 46 degrees Celsius and 50 degrees Celsius, far exceeding the 32 degrees Celsius heat-stress threshold defined for sports such as football and tennis.

According to aqi.in, Delhi did not record a single clean air day in 2025. And, a report by Esri India and IPE Global projects a two-fold rise in heatwave days in Delhi by 2030.

Gajendra Singh, who is the husband and coach of Paris Paralympics bronze medallist and two-time world para champion sprinter Simran Sharma, says the pollution level in Delhi “takes a toll on the body”. “When we do repeated sprints (in training), Simran vomits and her cough lasts longer. Our training programme revolves around the AQI (Air Quality Index) levels,” he said.

So much so, elite athletes are relocating to the south for relatively cleaner air and milder summers, while those with greater means are moving overseas. Left behind are juniors and grassroots athletes — the cohort from which many of India’s potential 2036 Olympians will emerge.

Guleria agreed that the “window for safe outdoor exercise is shrinking”. “Because breathing rates increase during exercise, more polluted air is inhaled, increasing exposure to harmful particles, which over time can cause breathing difficulty, chest tightness, and reduced overall performance,” said Guleria, now the chairman of Medanta’s Institute of Internal Medicine and Respiratory and Sleep Medicine.

Coaches and athletes have, meanwhile, been advocating for indoor, temperature-controlled arenas. Neeraj Chopra spoke about it in 2021: “I have been saying that there should be an indoor track for athletics at least in Patiala. If you see the smallest of countries, they have indoor tracks.”

In his recent report for “restructuring and revitalising of NIS, Patiala”, badminton great Pullela Gopichand suggested a “flagship multi-sport indoor complex housing climate-controlled training halls” at the centre.

Hockey coach Siwach says she first encountered an indoor hockey centre “in a rural area near Amsterdam a few years ago”. Later, she proposed to the Government that a similar centre be built in India.

Time is running out now, she warns. “Even now, when I go to the ground, the irritation in my eyes and throat is so intense that I feel compelled to finish quickly and go back indoors. If I’m experiencing this, imagine what the players, who run constantly, must be going through. How can coaches develop quality talent under such conditions?”

With inputs from Nitin Sharma, Pritish Raj