Dozens of international sport events have been cancelled or postponed around the world amid an outbreak of a new type of coronavirus. The pathogen’s effect has been felt across a range of sports – from athletics, rugby and golf to football, tennis and motorsports.
The epidemic, which began in China in late December, has plunged the global sporting calendar into disarray and cast a shadow over preparations for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games. Qualifiers for the Summer Games in Japan are among a growing list of competitions either pushed back or relocated because of the virus.
In the modern era, this virus has created what is fast becoming an unprecedented situation,” said Simon Chadwick, director of the Centre for the Eurasian Sport Industry.
“Sport has been beset over the last three or four decades by drug bans and boycotts, though nothing matches the scale of the coronavirus … With every match or event cancelled, the industry’s economic impact is undermined; revenues from ticket sales being hit; apparel and sportswear sales are down. For modern commercial sport, there has never been anything like this,” he told Al Jazeera.
“It is a test for leaders and managers working in the industry, but also for athletes and participants.”
The virus has now infected more than 90,000 people and killed 3,000, the vast majority in China. Some governments responded to the outbreak by banning travel to and from China and denying entry to foreign nationals who had visited the country.
The travel restrictions hit China’s athletes badly, affecting their ability to travel for competition.
The Chinese gymnastics team was forced to pull out of the World Cup in Melbourne last month because of an Australian ban on foreign nationals travelling from China and despite none of the delegation showing symptoms.
China’s men’s tennis team also withdrew from the Davis Cup World Group I tie against Romania, scheduled for March 6-7 in the eastern Romanian city of Piatra Neamt, due to similar restrictions.
Chinese tennis star Saisai Zheng, said she was saddened for her fellow athletes in China. Speaking at a news conference at the Qatar Total Open in Doha on Wednesday, the 26-year-old said she has been able to attend tournaments as she was already on the road when the outbreak was declared a global health emergency in January.
“Every day you see some news, it’s pretty sad,” the 34th-ranked Zheng said. “Many [Chinese] athletes were working pretty hard, and right now the situation is they can only stay home.”
The outbreak has also disrupted several sport events in China.
The World Athletics Indoor Championships, a key warm-up event for track and field Olympic athletes, was due to be held in the Chinese city of Nanjing from March 13-15 but has been postponed to next year.
The F1 Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai will no longer take place on April 19 and no alternative date has been set.
Besides athletes and organisers in China, sports businesses and manufacturers have also been affected.
Du Mingrui, founder and CEO of zx42195, the biggest running tour and registration company in China, said he has lost at least $1m in business. He said his factories in China’s capital, Beijing – which produce medals, t-shirts and other merchandise for more than 70 races around the world – were forced shut for more than three weeks because of the epidemic.
“We had to cancel most of our registrations [more than 2,000] for the first half of the year,” he told Al Jazeera. “We understand the situation… money is nothing now. The most important [thing] is that we finish this disaster first.”
In South Korea, which has the highest number of reported cases outside of China, some athletes are being forced to train in isolation. The country has 5,328 cases and at least 28 deaths.
The national training centre in Jincheon remains locked down, as part of the country’s prevention measures, with athletes training inside.
“We were lucky enough to dispatch our top athletes to an overseas training camp in Australia in the middle of February,” Younghoon Chung, performance and development section chief at the South Korean athletics federation, told Al Jazeera.
“[But] the sprint team and others on the national team .. are affected domestically because of the coronavirus issue,” he said in a phone interview from the capital, Seoul. “Nobody can move out [of the national training centre], they can only train inside … and outsiders, teams that we wanted to join the national team for a joint training camp, they cannot any more.”
The virus has also plagued European football.
Several games in Italy’s Serie A have been postponed after hundreds of cases were detected in the country, while some English clubs have banned players from shaking hands at their training grounds. Switzerland’s top league has also been put on hold until at least March 23, after clubs rejected the possibility of playing behind closed doors
