Coronavirus and Sport

[Hot Pepsi]

So no country that failed to qualify for 2021 would be eligible for 2022?

There is no way that would get a majority within UEFA.

Well then, play better. In recent decades, how many countries that failed to make a Euro managed to make the next World Cup?

So as it is, there will be two different international tournaments happening at the same time.

[jwdd27]

England didn't qualify for Euro 2008, but qualified for WC2010

Switzerland and Belgium did the same for 2012 and 2014

Denmark did it 2016 and 2018

So, it's fairly frequent and I'm sure there are a lot instances in the reverse direction

[Antepli Ejderha]

Tokyo get their heads out of the sand finally.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

To be fair they had a shit load more sand to worry about than cancelling a tennis event, or a football one, or a rugby one. They had all of those and 50 others all in one go.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

So, it's fairly frequent and I'm sure there are a lot instances in the reverse direction

Czechoslovakia won the Euros in 1976 but didn't qualify for Argentina '78. The same was true for Greece who won Euro 2004 but didn't go to South Africa two years later.

[Janik]

The Czech Republic also reached the Euro final in '96, the semi in '04 and were pretty unlucky to go out early on in '00. The didn't qualify for the World Cup in any of '94, '98 or '02.

Two years is enough of a cycle for teams to change standards dramatically. Using the Euros effectively means using a set of qualifiers that ran in '18-'19 for a tournament in 2022. It's a very poor option, to only be taken if there are no others available. But the only option being a very poor one is a bullet a lot of sports authorities are going to have to bite, isn't it?

[Satchmo Distel]

Agreed, but I think you could do a WCQ campaign quite quickly if needed. Straight knock-outs with home and away legs would be 4 games per country. Groups of 4 would be 6 games. And you could go all the way to summer 2022 to get the games in.

Janik, would you assume that Wimbledon 2020 is not going to happen? I just can't see where it would go, and the daylight hours start to shrink after July. You could possibly have a reduced field and no doubles but I find it very unlikely that London will be out of the danger zone by then, or that players would want to risk their careers and lives.

[longeared]

These are clearly insoluble problems for the 2022 World Cup and therefore the obvious solution is to cancel it altogether.

[Southport Zeb]

Czechoslovakia won the Euros in 1976 but didn't qualify for Argentina '78. The same was true for Greece who won Euro 2004 but didn't go to South Africa two years later.

Greece didn't get to go to Germany two years after win the European Championship. They did qualify for South Africa six years after.

[Third rate Leszno]

Suspension of UK motorsport extended until the end of June. Next three rounds of the WRC look pretty certain to be canned. Speedway of Nations, due to be held across Germany, Latvia and in Manchester has also been postponed.

[Janik]

Janik, would you assume that Wimbledon 2020 is not going to happen? I just can't see where it would go, and the daylight hours start to shrink after July. You could possibly have a reduced field and no doubles but I find it very unlikely that London will be out of the danger zone by then, or that players would want to risk their careers and lives.

Not a cat's chance in hell of it happening. No way is sport that requires international travel going again by June. And grass court Tennis in England has to happen in summer to have dry enough courts that are not a skating ring. I doubt the US Open will happen either and I suspect the FFT will end up being told where to stick their September dates (a good chance of Nadal as a no-show, which would start a domino effect of withdrawals). Next year's Aussie is probably touch-and-go, I think.

[ursus arctos]

Fox Sports 1 got close to a million people to watch a live simulation of a NASCAR race featuring some actual NASCAR drivers over the weekend


https://awfulannouncing.com/racing/n...is-sunday.html

[Hot Pepsi]

I watched some of that. On TV - well, on my phone screen - it looks the same as the real thing and nobody is at risk.

[Hot Pepsi]

I kinda think American football is where this will break. If the NFL and college games start to be cancelled, a lot more people are doing to be in the “let ‘em die!” camp. Hopefully, things will be better by then. At the very least, we’ll have football in front of no crowds.

[ursus arctos]

Very much agree

I'm a bit surprised that there wasn't more about spring scrimmages being cancelled at SEC schools

[Levin]

I think this is optimistic.

https://twitter.com/EHF/status/1242786188160712704

Alternate dates for the end of the season in Champions League and International Handball. It also raises some issues regarding contracts. Grâce Zaadi plays for Metz but is joining Rostov Don in June. Both teams are still in contention for the Final Four. There will be other players in the same situation.

[Hot Pepsi]

Very much agree

I'm a bit surprised that there wasn't more about spring scrimmages being cancelled at SEC schools

I think that losing the NCAA tournament and college baseball and softball, among other things, made that less important.

It's good that Nick Saban made a public statement urging people to stay inside and what not. Alabama seems like the kind of place that might follow Trump's idiocy, but they like Saban even more (except for the people around Auburn)

[Ray de Galles]

IOC under fire after boxers at London event test positive for Covid-19

[ursus arctos]

Jeezus

[Hot Pepsi]

There was a Pan-Am wrestling event a few weeks ago in Ottawa with Olympic implications that now looks like it was a terrible idea. Even if it were only the participants at risk - which of course, it isn't - they shouldn't be allowed to take that risk. Nobody who has worked their whole life for that is going to risk losing their opportunity, even if it was the sensible thing to do. We cannot expect young people to think like that.

[Gangster Octopus]

I thought that Pan-Am had bitten the dust.

[Hot Pepsi]

The airline did a while ago. Pan-Am means it includes athletes from the whole western hemisphere.

[Ray de Galles]

Doesn't the Western Hemisphere start in Greenwich, London - and all the places on the same meridian?

[ursus arctos]

Not in US parlance, though it really should be seen as being so (not to mention the Iberian peninsula and Western France, etc.)

[Satchmo Distel]

Pan-Am has 41 members, which is actually the same number as CONCACAF, but Pan-Am also includes the South American countries, so there must be some CONCACAF members who are too small or uninterested to join Pan-Am.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panam_Sports

This list shows you which CONCACAF members are not in the IOC:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CONCACAF