After the epidemic, how to resume the competition scientifically and orderly and resist the “butterfly effect” is a big problem that the world sports world needs to answer.
Xinhua News Agency, Chengdu, March 31 (Wang Jianbing) walked out of the open air during the spring germination and ran happily, which is a great wish of many runners recently. On the 22nd, the 2020 Chengdu double heritage marathon health race started in Dujiangyan city, Chengdu, which enabled 1,000 local runners to get what they wanted and boosted the confidence of sports fans.
At present, the domestic epidemic has been well controlled, and sports fans are expecting more and more to restart the event. However, in the case that the epidemic has not been lifted, the resumption of sports events still faces many practical problems. However, throughout the world sports arena, a large number of sports events have been pressed by the epidemic “pause button”, thus generating a series of chain reactions. The unprecedented test is lying ahead.
After the epidemic, the competition will be held carefully
“this is a very special experience!” Participants in the health run of the 2020 Chengdu double heritage marathon sighed, “after two months at home, I feel the happiest breathing and the most comfortable mood now. I have confidence in restoring normal order to the society!”
The restart of mass sports events is very popular, but a question that must be answered is how to do a good job in epidemic prevention to ensure the health and safety of personnel.
It is understood that Dujiangyan city, the healthy place of Chengdu double heritage marathon in 2020, is a low-risk area for epidemic prevention in Chengdu, and no new cases of coronavirus pneumonia have been found so far. Before the competition, the organizing committee successively surveyed the competition routes on the spot for many times, coordinated epidemic prevention and control forces such as health, disease control and public security, and formulated activity organization plans and epidemic prevention and control plans. The organizing committee collected the epidemic prevention and control information collection form of contestants and staff, and investigated the life track and physical condition of all personnel.
On the day of the competition, all contestants and staff must show their health certificates, wear masks, and enter after passing the body temperature test. At the start of the game, the method of dividing and sharing a shot every 2 minutes starts in sequence. Each group has 100 people respectively, and the interval between the group and the group is relatively wide, and the interval between the group and the group is 5 meters.
As you can see, even if only 1,000 people participate in mass sports events, detailed epidemic prevention and control plans are needed. How will the CBA league with the nature of competition and performance be restarted?
First of all, the restart time of CBA depends on the epidemic situation. The CBA alliance has held a shareholders’ meeting recently and plans to restart the league in mid-April. However, some sources revealed that the resumption plan currently formulated by CBA alliance has not been approved by the State General Administration of Sports. At the same time, the restart of the CBA league also requires the approval of the disease control department.
If the hope of restarting the league in April is slim, CBA can only postpone the restart plan to May, but this is only a plan. If the league cannot be restarted in May, whether the league can maintain its integrity this season will cause great changes. According to the current situation, if you insist on finishing this season and the restart time is too low, it will probably affect the next season.
Su Qun, a famous Chinese basketball commentator, said that once the Chinese Basketball Association determines the resumption time, the league will inform all clubs and participating teams at least 21 days before the confirmed resumption date, but at present, the clubs have not released the message of receiving the notice.
On the other hand, the CBA league considers suspending the main and away matches, instead adopting the tournament system, concentrating 20 teams in one or two cities and playing empty matches. The “match system” can reduce the problem that the main and away Boat cars are tired and easy to be infected, while the empty match can avoid crowd gathering to the greatest extent. The game is provided to fans via TV and Internet live broadcast.
At present, Qingdao is considered as a very intentional place in the selection of candidate cities. Its hardware configuration has the basic conditions for closed competitions, while Foshan is another candidate city. If the CBA league cannot reach a consensus with the two cities, it will not rule out the possibility of concentrating 20 teams in one city.
CBA restarts many
mass sports events such as marathon, and the problems faced by the resumption of competitions are more in the aspect of health and epidemic prevention, which is relatively “simple”. However, the challenges faced by competition and performance sports events represented by CBA are much more complicated.
First of all, it is a big test to gather players for the match in a short period of time. At present, many foreign aid teams in CBA are in the United States, and some teams are trained abroad. According to the domestic isolation policy, these players must be isolated for 14 days before returning from abroad. After arriving in the competition city, they need to be isolated for another 14 days. In this way, they are likely to miss the previous rounds. A feasible solution is that players fly directly from abroad to the competition city, but the problem is that the competition city has not been determined yet.
The second is how to balance the interests of all parties. Once the league is restarted, an important significance for the CBA alliance is to fulfill the sponsor contract and ensure the overall income. Therefore, even if the mode of making empty matches is adopted, the league will actively promote the restart of the league. The NBA also has the same consideration. Recently, an NBA reporter revealed that many team executives were determined to resume the playoff this season. “The benefits involved in the game are too large. Even if there is no audience at the game, even if there are only three rounds of series, even if the game is played around August, they will do their best to resume the playoffs”.
However, the competition will make an empty match, which does not bring much economic benefits to a single club. Therefore, compared with organizing players to enter the game now, individual teams prefer to wait for the epidemic to further improve or even end, and conduct normal games at home.
Another challenge is how to get the support of the host city. Even if the games are empty, the host city needs to prepare competition venues and isolated places that can accommodate 10 or even 20 teams. At the same time, even if there is no audience at the competition site, there are still a large number of staff, such as relay personnel, health logistics, site services, security, etc., resulting in a certain degree of staff gathering. This requires the host city to coordinate the local public security and health systems for strong support. At the moment when the epidemic has not been lifted, this is not a small pressure on any city.
The 2019-2020 season is the 2.0 era of CBA. The League has launched a series of reform measures to enhance the influence of the league. Nowadays, the league is suspended due to the epidemic, which not only has economic losses, but also loses the attention of fans and media exposure. Therefore, for the league, it is necessary to restart the league. As for how to overcome many difficulties, greater wisdom and determination are needed.
In the world of professional sports, the schedule of various events is often closely linked. The rhythm of athletes preparing for matches, competitions and disappointments tends to be stable. This is a highly professional embodiment, but it makes the resumption of the competition organizing committee become a complicated systematic project.
Take CBA as an example. Before the Spring Festival, CBA played 30 rounds of regular season in 2019-2020 season. There were 160 rounds in the regular season, and there were three rounds, seven rounds and four wins in the playoffs, at least 12 rounds are required, and at most 21 rounds are required. If it is based on the density of three matches a week, it will take about 9 to 12 weeks to finish all the matches. In other words, the competition will not end until the middle of June or until the end of June.
After the CBA schedule is over, the national team players have to reserve unsuccessful race time to prepare for the Tokyo Olympic Games. The previously finalized Olympic unsuccessful race will take place on June 23. In this way, the CBA schedule is bound to conflict with the national team’s preparations for the Olympic Games unsuccessful race.
The CBA broadcaster “Tencent CBA” posted a microblog on March 11, saying: if the league is restarted in early April, the remaining 16 regular season matches are scheduled to end in 5 weeks, and the playoffs are pending. The whole season ends at the end of May or the beginning of June, allowing the national team to prepare for the Olympic Games unsuccessful race.
If the Olympic unsuccessful race time remains unchanged, CBA will have to compress the schedule. However, there is also the possibility of delaying the Olympic unsuccessful race, which makes it more difficult for CBA to plan the schedule.
The International Olympic Committee has agreed to postpone the Tokyo Olympic Games next year, and there is no definite news until unsuccessful race.
How to coordinate the time of players participating in various competitions and ensure the scientific and reasonable schedule of the league matches is no longer a problem that CBA league can deal with unilaterally. Looking at the world, this problem is also common.
Take football as an example. As the world’s first sport, FIFA’s competition schedule has been arranged until 2024. It is reported that UEFA will hold a video conference in the near future to discuss the delay of Euro 2020. Some insiders analyzed that if Euro 2020 is postponed for one year, the final of the top four European League matches scheduled to be held in the summer of 2021 will also face the risk of cancellation.
In terms of club events, Uefa also considered reducing the remaining games from two rounds to one round after the resumption of the European war, shortening the schedule as much as possible. At present, FIFA needs to agree a new temporary schedule with FIFA of all continents to balance the conflict between the national team and the club. For FIFA, if this year’s European Cup and America Cup are really delayed for one year, the first New World Club Cup held in China in the summer of 2021 will face a big impact.
As the “new year of sports”, 2020 is now facing the most severe challenges. After the epidemic, how to resume the competition scientifically and orderly and resist the “butterfly effect” is a big problem that the world sports world needs to answer.