As environmental conditions increasingly affect outdoor sport, Gallant Sports brings greater attention to the materials beneath synthetic sports surfaces with GallantBounce, incorporating a minimum of 20% Nike Grind™ from end-of-life footwear
New Delhi, September 2026: Every winter, North India faces a familiar contradiction. Just as schools, academies and sporting institutions seek to keep children active outdoors, deteriorating air quality can lead to restrictions and postponement of outdoor sporting activities.
In November 2025, the Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) wrote to the governments of Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh asking them to consider postponing physical sports competitions scheduled during November and December, citing prevailing air-quality conditions and the need to safeguard students participating in sporting activities.
For a country investing heavily in sports participation and infrastructure, this raises a larger question:
When the time available for children to play outdoors is already under pressure, how thoughtfully are we building the environments in which they play?
Gallant Sports believes part of that conversation needs to happen beneath the game.
The company has introduced GallantBounce, a synthetic-turf infill solution incorporating a minimum of 20% Nike Grind™ rubber sourced from end-of-life footwear. Designed for active sports surfaces, GallantBounce is engineered to provide cushioning, stability and performance while bringing recycled material into an application where performance and material selection need to work together.
The part of the field nobody talks about
When an athlete steps onto an artificial-turf field, the visible conversation is usually about the turf itself. But beneath the surface is an engineered system in which the infill contributes to the playing characteristics of the field.
That makes infill more than simply a technical specification.
It is one of the materials with which athletes interact during hours of training and play, making its composition and performance relevant considerations when developing sports infrastructure.
The carcinogenicity question needs context
The use of rubber infill in synthetic sports fields has been the subject of scientific research, particularly where recycled tyre-derived rubber crumb, commonly known as tyre crumb or SBR, is concerned.
Studies have identified substances including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), metals and other chemical constituents in some tyre-derived rubber materials. Several PAHs are recognised as carcinogenic or potentially carcinogenic substances, which has led to continued research into exposure levels and potential health implications associated with rubber crumb used in sports surfaces.
However, this does not mean that synthetic turf or all rubber infill is carcinogenic.
A 2025 review of the available epidemiological evidence found limited evidence of a causal relationship between exposure to synthetic turf and adverse health outcomes. Other risk assessments examining exposure to chemicals from tyre-derived rubber infill have similarly found that estimated exposures under the scenarios studied were not expected to present an appreciable health risk.
The distinction is important.
The presence of a substance that is classified as carcinogenic does not automatically mean that a product containing trace amounts of that substance presents a carcinogenic risk to people using the product. Risk depends on factors including concentration, exposure, route and duration.
This is why material selection, testing and evidence-based assessment matter when specifying sports infrastructure.
Gallant Sports’ approach with GallantBounce is to bring a different recycled material stream into the conversation: Nike Grind™ rubber recovered from end-of-life footwear, rather than simply treating all recycled rubber infill as one category.
From old footwear to the playing surface
Nike Grind™ is made from recycled materials including rubber from shoe outsoles, foam from midsoles and textile material from uppers. Nike states that Nike Grind materials have been used in applications including athletic fields, running tracks, tennis and basketball courts and playground surfaces.
Nike also reports that more than 148 million pounds of Nike Grind made from recycled scrap and footwear has been recycled through external customers globally since the programme was established in 1992.
Gallant Sports is bringing this material into India’s sports infrastructure ecosystem through GallantBounce.
The product incorporates a minimum of 20% Nike Grind™ rubber, giving material recovered from end-of-life footwear another application as part of a synthetic sports surface.
Gallant Sports is India’s first and only authorised licensee of products containing Nike Grind™, enabling the incorporation of the material into GallantBounce.
Material choice is part of sports infrastructure
The conversation around sports surfaces is often reduced to questions of turf pile height, colour, speed or certification.
But a sports facility is a system.
The turf, infill, shock pad, sub-base, drainage, maintenance programme and other components all contribute to how the facility performs over time.
This is particularly relevant in India, where sports infrastructure has to operate across significantly different environmental conditions, from intense summer heat to winter air-quality challenges.
A well-designed facility therefore needs to consider not just what the athlete sees, but also what sits beneath the playing surface and how each component performs throughout the facility’s lifecycle.
GallantBounce is designed within that broader approach.
When environmental conditions affect participation
The pollution-season challenge also has implications beyond competition schedules.
Research examining children and physical activity has found associations between increased air pollution and reduced physical activity, with higher PM2.5 exposure associated with lower levels of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity and greater sedentary behaviour.
The objective, therefore, is not to suggest that a sports surface can solve an air-quality problem.
It cannot.
Air pollution requires action across transport, industry, energy, urban planning and public policy.
But when conditions allow children and athletes to play, the infrastructure available to them should be thoughtfully designed, properly engineered and built around the demands of active use.
That includes paying attention to the materials that make up the playing system.
“We cannot control the air. We can control what we build.”
“We cannot control the air our cities breathe, but we can take responsibility for the materials and systems we choose to build for our children to play on. Sports infrastructure must be planned around real environmental conditions, with careful attention to performance, durability and material selection.
“For too long, conversations around sports infrastructure have focused on what is visible — the turf, the track, the court and the lights. The material underneath the game deserves the same level of attention. GallantBounce is our effort to bring recycled materials into that conversation while maintaining focus on the requirements of active sports surfaces,” said Nasir Ali, Founder & CEO, Gallant Sports & Infra.
Gallant Sports is already deploying GallantBounce across projects for schools, academies, clubs and community sports facilities, bringing the solution into real-world sporting environments.
The next generation of sports infrastructure
India’s sports infrastructure story is moving beyond simply building more facilities.
The next question is how those facilities are designed, what materials go into them and how thoughtfully every component is selected.
From extreme summer heat to winter air-quality challenges, Indian athletes train in conditions that cannot simply be designed away.
But infrastructure can be designed with those realities in mind.
That means asking better questions about every part of the playing environment, including the material beneath the game.
Because the future of sports infrastructure isn’t just about building more fields. It’s about building better fields.
About Gallant Sports & Infra
Gallant Sports & Infra is a sports infrastructure company delivering end-to-end sports facilities across India. Its capabilities include the design and development of football turfs, hockey fields, athletics tracks, multi-sport courts and other sports infrastructure.
Gallant works with schools, universities, academies, clubs, institutions and community facilities, providing integrated solutions across design, civil works, surfacing, lighting and associated infrastructure.
