COVID-19 Affecting World Sporting Events

Spogmai

COVID-19 has impacted everything from public health to national economies. Aside from that, it has had a huge impact on 2020 sporting events.

Due to the novel-Coronavirus, almost all sport events have been canceled or postponed until the situation is handled. Badminton, cricket, soccer, biking, cycling, tennis, swimming, rugby… and the list goes on.

Tournaments, games, and sport events have been cut-short, postponed and even canceled.

Basketball: NBA has announced that it would suspend the season until further notice because of players and organization members that tested positive for the coronavirus.

Baseball: The MLB or Major Basketball League were also in uncertainty due to the virus but have finally decided to postpone the season. They have also canceled the series scheduled in April in Mexico and Puerto Rico.

Euro 2020 and Copa America are both postponed until 2021. La Liga in Spain is now suspended, Serie A in Italy and Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 in France are all suspended. Other countries have also canceled national games.

Cricket: COVID-19 has also put cricket on hold all over the world. Some of the cricket matches were played without an audience but as the situation worsened, they were obliged to either cancel or postpone the rest of the tournament.

NBA Season Suspended after Major Virus Epidemic Continues to Spread

Jayden

On March 11th the National Basketball Association’s commissioner Adam Silver declared the suspension of the NBA season after star player of the Utah Jazz Rudy Gobert tested positive for the COVID-19.

Initially, Adam Silver only ordered the cancellation of the Utah Jazz’s game due to Rudy Gobert testing positive but after a more thorough investigation they found out that over ten NBA players have been diagnosed with the disease. Rudy Gobert, just hours before he tested positive was seen leaving the press conference and on his way out, made sure to touch all the different microphones. He did this jokingly of course, but when it was later revealed he was infected, many of the Utah Jazz players and fans were frustrated with Rudy Gobert. They accused him of being reckless and careless.

Another star player of the Jazz named Donovan Mitchelle was the most annoyed with Gobert’s actions, because Donovan Mitchelle ended up contracting the disease. Donovan Mitchelle stated, “Rudy Gobert was careless and it took me a while to cool off after finding out.”

The NBA commissioner has postponed all league games indefinitely meaning no one really knows when the NBA will return. Many suggestions have been thrown out on how the NBA should do things if the season continues. One suggestion was said by a fan who believes that the top 10 teams should play in an in-season tournament to decide which teams make the playoffs. This would be different from the way they do it now because in today's NBA only the top 8 teams from the east and west conference will make it to the playoffs.

Olympics 2020 Postponed

Niyanthri

In light of the recent COVID-19 pandemic, many sports events have been postponed or cancelled. Some events include the cancellation of the NBA season and the French Open being postponed until September.

However, one decision that came as a shock to the sporting community was the Olympics being pushed back to 2021. The Olympics have only been postponed or cancelled three times in modern history, all due to wars (World Wars l and ll respectively). This is the first time that it has been delayed because of a health risk.

The decision came after Canada pulled it’s athletes out of the competition and requested the IOC (International Olympic Committee) to "to postpone the games for one year". Prior to the announcement by Canada, the Olympic organizers still planned to run the games as usual. The games chief Yoshiro Mori has said that cancelling the games was not being considered, however, they will be postponed.

As of March 30, 2020, the IOC and the local organizers have decided that the games will be moved to July 23, 2021, to August 8, 2021.

Athletes Affected by COVID-19

Safwaan

Ever since the Coronavirus pandemic had started, many different sports leagues had shut down. Athletes have been heavily affected, by having to lower their salaries to save money and being very high risk to the virus because of their interactions with other athletes.

Many athletes have tested positive for COVID-19, which has forced some players to go into quarantine. The first NBA player to have tested positive for COVID-19 was Rudy Gobert, two-time Defensive Player of the Year in the NBA. He had joked about the virus in an interview days before his test came back positive when he jokingly touched all the microphone in the press conference, The NBA was suspended hours after his results came back. The second player to have gotten COVID-19 was Donovan Mitchell, who is the teammate of Rudy Gobert and is the starting point guard for the Utah Jazz.

The English Premier League was also suspended due to the manager of the club Arsenal FC, Mikel Arteta, testing positive for COVID-19 and the centre back for Juventus, Daniele Rugani, had also tested positive for COVID-19.

Ever since the different leagues had been suspended, there have been more reports of players having the virus, such as Kevin Durant, Callum Hudson-Odoi, Christian Wood and other athletes that have decided to stay anonymous.

It is possible for many of these leagues to end the season but many other leagues have tried hard to restart the season with extra safety precautions, such as the NBA’s "25-day plan to return to game action".