In addition to the event that had to “shut down”, another regretful news came from the Tokyo Olympic torch relay in Greece.
Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, March 13 (reporter Lu Xingji, Li Li) affected by the outbreak of covid-19, more “bad news” came from the world sports arena on the 13th, with many well-known coaches, athletes “win”, the number of stop events continues to increase, the five major European leagues are all suspended at least this week, and the Olympic torch relay activities in Greece are also urgently stopped.
After Serie A and La Liga announced the extension of the game, the Premier League and France also decided to suspend it on the 13th. The Bundesliga, which had planned to continue to support the “Ghost Race” this week, also announced the extension of the game this weekend.
The Premier League, which had neither suspended nor closed the game before, finally “couldn’t bear” under the blow of the confirmed news from relevant personnel on the 12th local time.
Previously, three players in Leicester City had been isolated due to suspected symptoms. However, the Premier League still said it would play this weekend as usual according to the government’s guidance. Until Arsenal coach Atta was confirmed to be “successful”, the Premier League finally held an emergency meeting to discuss the schedule. During the meeting, Chelsea General odui was diagnosed again.
After the meeting, the Premier League announced the suspension, which was tentatively scheduled to resume on April 4. Other English professional football matches and England matches of all ages have also been suspended.
The French league played in the previous empty field was also suspended. The French professional football league (LFP) officially stopped all French and French league matches on the same day, and the recovery date is to be determined.
The only German football professional league (DFL) that is still planning to support it reluctantly also made decisions in a short period of time. First, the Presidium proposed to suspend all competitions from March 17 to April 2 at the meeting held on 13th. Then DFL announced that all bundesa and Bundesliga events will be postponed this weekend.
The epidemic also completely disrupted the process of Uefa Europa Cup. Previously, Uefa had postponed matches involving Italian teams and announced on the 13th that all European matches would be postponed next week.
In addition to factors such as coach, player infection and traffic risks, the reason for forcing the league to stop is the “inappropriate” enthusiasm of the fans. According to previous reports, the effect of empty games on preventing crowd gathering is not ideal, and there are still a large number of fans gathering near the stadium, bringing the risk of epidemic spread.
In fact, professional sports events in Europe have basically been suspended. The impact on other sports events has also been further aggravated.
Men’s Professional Tennis Association (ATP) announced that ATP events were suspended for 6 weeks. Jay Monahan, chairman of the Professional Golf Tour, said on the 12th that all events would be held in the next month without fans watching the game, but then he changed his mouth and said, all matches will be canceled in the next three weeks. After a confirmed case appeared in the McLaren team, the Melbourne race of the Formula One world championship (F1) was finally canceled. The subsequent Bahrain station and Vietnam station also announced the extension. In addition, the International Volleyball Federation decided on the 13th that the 2020 World Volleyball League would be postponed until the end of the Tokyo Olympics.
In addition to the event that had to “shut down”, another regretful news came from the Tokyo Olympic torch relay in Greece.
The Torch of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games was successfully collected at the ancient Olympia site on the 12th. It was transferred to Greece on March 19 according to the original plan, but the relay was stopped after only one day, the reason is that the enthusiastic crowd gathering cannot be stopped.
Previously, the Greek Olympic Committee repeatedly reminded the public to be alert to the epidemic and not to watch the torch relay. However, when the Olympic torch was passed in the Greek town of Sparta, there were still “unexpected large crowds” gathering to watch.
For this reason, the Greek Olympic Committee decided to cancel the torch relay in Greece after consulting with the country’s health department and the International Olympic Committee. The Olympic flame will be transferred to the Tokyo Olympic organizing committee on the 19th as planned, but there will be no audience at the handover ceremony. The Tokyo Olympic organizing committee later issued a statement saying that it would cooperate closely with all parties to ensure that the torch relay in Japan was carried out safely on March 26 as scheduled.
The more realistic problem is the Olympic qualifier. After the torch collection ceremony on the 12th, the International Olympic Committee announced that it would assist the international sports federation and the National (regional) Olympic committee to find a feasible solution to avoid athletes missing the competition period, to ensure that all athletes participate in the Olympic qualifier fairly.
On the basis of the impact on previous projects, the International Judo Federation announced on the 13th that all the Olympic qualifying matches in March would be canceled, but did not mention the dates to be held separately. The World Wrestling Federation postponed the European regional qualification competition held in Budapest and the African-Oceania regional qualification competition held in jedidede, Monaco, to May, the global qualifier held in Sofia, Bulgaria was postponed to the beginning of June, while the date and place of the qualifying tournament in the Asian division were still uncertain.
Although the prospect of the Olympic qualifier and even the Tokyo Olympic Games has cast a shadow, the preparation for Olympic Games teams in China have not yet relaxed their training. On the 13th, against the background that the International Table Tennis Federation announced the suspension of all events before the end of April, the Chinese table tennis team arrived in Macao from Qatar for the next stage of training.
According to the information of the Chinese Table Tennis Association, since the national table tennis association arrived in Qatar for training in early February, the Chinese Table Tennis Association has been based on the development of the global epidemic and the epidemic changes in the host places of various international events, formulate various plans for the follow-up training sites of the team. After collective discussion, the team chose Macao with good epidemic prevention and control status as the place for follow-up training preparations.