2022: Nasty case of Qatar

[Hot Pepsi]

Agreed

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

The sheer quality of last night's Champions league final should leave us panting with anticipation for what we can expect in the 30 degree desert heat in 2022. It's going to be like the similarly high octane 1994 final in Pasadena.

[ursus arctos]

https://twitter.com/NcGeehan/status/1179278279179669504

[diggedy derek]

I've no idea how anyone will be able to watch it and live with themselves. Uncountable unknown, unnecessary deaths.

[Guy Profumo]

I've no idea how anyone will be able to watch it and live with themselves. Uncountable unknown, unnecessary deaths.

Then by that token, it also applies to the IAAF world championships happening now?

[Satchmo Distel]

It's also a growing and largely under-reported problem in the US:

https://www.citizen.org/wp-content/u...ed_workers.pdf

[Sporting]

I've no idea how anyone will be able to watch it and live with themselves. Uncountable unknown, unnecessary deaths.

It's a difficult one. There are human rights abuses of varying degrees and extent in many countries. Where do you draw the line?

[Sits]

At the point you can exercise some choice e.g. whether or not to watch a sporting event?

[Hot Pepsi]

Also, Qatar’s abuses and corruption are related directly to their efforts to host the event.

[imp]

Then by that token, it also applies to the IAAF world championships happening now?

Not watching them.

[Janik]

Likewise, for precisely this reason.

[Hot Pepsi]

I had no idea the IAAF WC were happening. I haven’t seen anything about it.

[ursus arctos]

There have been bits on NBCSN, but most of the coverage here has been on the Olympic Channel, which very few people get. And the lack of attention to athletics/track here outside of the Olympics keeps getting worse.

[Satchmo Distel]

Ursus, will that change when the US hosts in 2021?

It's lost the status it had in its first decade* but that's unfortunate because sometimes the field for a discipline can be higher quality than its Olympics one, although I think there are more athletes skipping it than was once the case.

*1983 and 1987 were the first times I was able to watch a global athletics event with no boycotts, so they were hugely important.

[ursus arctos]

I don't know.

I doubt that NBC will show much more of it, as they find other sports to be more profitable. There should be more print coverage just because of ease of access, but it isn't going to penetrate the US cable sports ecosystem.

And the Salazar debacle could well have an additional negative impact.

[Hot Pepsi]

Nobody gets the Olympic channel.

Apparently, attendance is poor too.
https://www.espn.com/olympics/story/...ionships-qatar

2021 will be in Eugene I a rebuilt facility funded by Phil Knight. Nothing against Eugene or Oregon, but it says a lot that the world championships of a major international sport is happening in a fairly small stadium in the 141st largest city in the US.

It would be like Britain getting to host and having them in Aberdeen.

[ursus arctos]

Also the home stadium of Salazar's Nike Project.

On the other hand, by far the most dedicated and knowledgeable crowd in the country.

The Qataris have been papering the house for the later days of the meeting after the early debacles

[Hot Pepsi]

Yeah, I can respect that.

For comparison, the US Olympic wrestling trials will be held in State College this year. They’ve been in Iowa City, etc before. That makes sense. It’s a niche sport that is massively popular in a few places. This happens to be one of them.

But wrestling is - or at least used to be - far more niche than track and field. And it’s not like the NCAA wrestling championships, let alone the WORLD, championships are still held on a campus site. They’re in a major city in a big arena.

I recognize Eugene is a lot bigger than State College and closer to a big city and has a unique relationship to track, but I would have imagined the LA Coliseum would be the venue for a major track event in the US. In the 20 - 30 years ago, it probably would have been.

[Snake Plissken]

They've reacted to the shortage of hotel rooms by hiring two cruise ships for the duration of the tournament - https://www.theguardian.com/football...loating-hotels

Also:

Qatar has long considered cruise ships a ‘sustainable’ part of their plans to accommodate the 1m-plus fans projected to attend the tournament in a country with a population of 2.7m. The Gulf state has a shortage of pre-existing hotel rooms and as many as 40,000 fans are anticipated to end up sleeping on ships, with the vast majority taking up spare capacity on existing vessels. One other suggestion floated by the SC has included fans camping in the desert close to the stadiums.

I can't see problems with any of that at all.

[Satchmo Distel]

"suggestion floated" - presumably an unintended pun.

[imp]

I read somewhere the other day that they're hoping fans will come for the day - go to two or three games and then fuck back off out by plane. The FIFA World Cup Experience in 14 Hours, or something. There's probably a certain kind of fan that appeals to.

[diggedy derek]

There are human rights abuses of varying degrees and extent in many countries. Where do you draw the line?

The very short answer to that is 'somewhere'

The slightly longer answer is 'not sure, but sometimes you just know'

The complete answer would take in things like the Joshua fighting in Saudi Arabia, and the 2018 World Cup in Russia. I was completely up for the later, but then Russia tried to kill the Skripals in Salisbury, and there seemed to be high profile political backing for anti-gay organisations. With Joshua in Saudi, I might have been OK if it wasn't for Jamal Khashoggi, but my perception is that Saudi is pretty much as brutal on human rights as ever despite some PR exercises.

I think where there's proactive human rights abuses going in parallel with the tournament, that's an obvious place.

[Nesta]

I had big, big reservations in advance of the Russia world cup, and thought I might take much less of an interest than usual- but I ended up as football-eyed as ever once it started, I think because of feeling that with Qatar lined up next, and then the tournament subsequently ballooning out to 48 teams, 2018 was pretty much the last world cup as we've known it.

[Nesta]

(and fuck knows what the US is going to be like in 2026. Will half the teams even be allowed in?)

[ursus arctos]

If things aren't better in that respect than they are now, there may well not be a tournament here to worry about