Factbox: Sports events hit by the coronavirus epidemic
Factbox: Sports events hit by the coronavirus epidemic.
(Reuters) – Here is a list of international sports events hit by the coronavirus outbreak:
OLYMPICS
- The Tokyo 2020 Olympics torch lighting ceremony in ancient Olympia will be held without spectators for the first time in more than 35 years.
- The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee postponed its March 15-18 Team USA Media Summit, where top U.S. athletes were expected to gather in Los Angeles ahead of the Olympics.
ITALIAN SPORTS
- Italy’s top sports body, the National Olympic Committee, has called for all sports events to be canceled until April 3 and asked the government to issue a decree to enforce the measure.
NORTH AMERICAN SPORTS
- Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer, the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League said they were temporarily restricting locker room access to players and “essential staff”.
WINTER SPORTS
- The Italian Winters Sports Federation (FISI) suspended all activity across its disciplines, including skiing, snowboarding and biathlon.
ATHLETICS
- The World Athletics Indoor Championships, scheduled for Nanjing from March 13-15, were postponed until next year. World Athletics is working with organizers on a date to host the biennial event in 2021.
- The Paris marathon has been postponed from April 5 to Oct. 18.
- The Barcelona marathon scheduled for March 15 has been postponed until Oct. 25.
- The Marathon des Sables ultramarathon, scheduled to take place in Morocco on April 3-13, has been postponed to Sept. 18-28.
ICE HOCKEY
- The Women’s World Ice Hockey Championships, scheduled for Canada from March 31 to April 10, have been canceled.
SOCCER
- The Champions League clash between Paris Saint Germain and Borussia Dortmund (BVB.DE) on March 11 will take place in an empty stadium.
- Olympiakos Piraeus’ Europa League last 16, first-leg tie at home to Wolverhampton Wanderers on March 12 will go ahead without spectators.
- Italy ordered all major sporting events, including top-flight Serie A games, to be played without fans for a month.
- All French top flight matches will be played in empty stadiums or with a maximum of 1,000 people until April 15.
- Ten Serie A matches have been postponed as well as two Coppa Italia semi-final ties (Juventus v AC Milan and Napoli v Inter Milan).
- The president of the Italian Football Federation, Gabriele Gravina, has refused to rule out the suspension of Serie A soccer if a player tests positive.
- Players in England’s Premier League will forgo traditional pre-match handshakes between opponents.
- Players from Danish Super League clubs Brondby and Lyngby are in isolation after they met former Denmark international Thomas Kahlenberg, who has tested positive for the virus.
- The Swiss league has been put on hold until at least March 23 after clubs rejected the possibility of playing without fans.
- All Romanian league matches will be played without fans until further notice.
- All Bulgarian league matches in the next two rounds will be played without fans.
- The Bulgarian Football Union suspended ticket sales for the Euro 2020 qualifying playoff semi-final between Bulgaria and Hungary on March 26.
- Asian Champions League matches involving Chinese clubs Guangzhou Evergrande, Shanghai Shenhua and Shanghai SIPG have been postponed.
The quarter-finals will be moved to September while the semi-finals have been moved to Oct. 14/15 and 28/29. The final dates (Nov. 22 and Nov. 28) are unchanged.
- China’s 2022 World Cup qualifiers against Maldives at home and Guam away in March have been moved to Buriram, Thailand, and will be played without spectators.
- FIFA and the Asian Football Confederation have agreed to postpone the Asian World Cup qualifying matches in March and June.
- The Chinese Football Association said domestic games at all levels would be postponed.
- South Korea’s professional league postponed the start of its new season. The league also asked its four AFC Champions League teams to hold games without spectators.
- Japan’s J.League postponed the restart of matches and the country’s top domestic soccer division will not hold any games in March.
- The French Ligue 1 game between RC Strasbourg and Paris St Germain scheduled for March 7 was postponed.
FORMULA ONE
- The Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai set for April 19 has been postponed by the governing body FIA and Formula One.
- The Bahrain Grand Prix, the second round of the season, will go ahead on March 22 without fans.
MOTOGP
- The opening two rounds of the season, in Qatar (March 8) and Thailand (March 22), will not go ahead as scheduled.
RUGBY
- France’s final Six Nations match against Ireland has been postponed, but Wales’ final game against Scotland will go ahead as scheduled on March 14.
- The Irish Rugby Football Union postponed the country’s Six Nations fixture against Italy.
- England’s final Six Nations match against Italy in Rome on March 14, which had been due to be played without fans, was postponed.
- The women’s Six Nations game between Scotland and France scheduled for March 7 in Glasgow was postponed after a home player tested positive for coronavirus.
TENNIS
- The BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, scheduled to start on March 10, has been canceled.
- The WTA canceled the Xi’an Open (April 13-19) and Kunming Open (April 27-May 3) in China.
TABLE TENNIS
- The world championships to be held in Busan, South Korea, from March 22-29 have been pushed back provisionally to June 21-28.
SPEED SKATING
- The International Skating Union postponed the March 13-15 short-track speed skating world championships in Seoul. The event will not be held before October.
BOXING
- The International Olympic Committee named Jordan as hosts of the boxing qualifiers for Asia and Oceania after an event in Wuhan was canceled. They will take place in Amman, Jordan, from March 3 to 11.
GOLF
- The women’s LPGA tour canceled the Honda LPGA Thailand event in Pattaya and the HSBC Women’s World Championship in Singapore.
- The European Tour said the Maybank Championship (April 16-19 in Kuala Lumpur) and the Volvo China Open (April 23-26 in Shenzhen) were postponed.
- The March 25-28 Bangabandhu Cup at Dhaka’s Kurmitola Golf Club has been postponed, the Asian Tour said.
CYCLING
- The final two stages of the UAE Tour were canceled after two Italian participants tested positive for coronavirus.
- Four teams, including Britain’s Ineos, have pulled out of several cycling races in Italy.
- Race organizers in Italy canceled the Strade Bianche one-day race.
- The Milan-San Remo one-day race, one of cycling’s five “Monument” classics, scheduled for March 21, was canceled.
RUGBY SEVENS
- The Japanese Rugby Football Union said the April 25-26 Asia Sevens Invitational, which doubles as a test event for rugby sevens at the 2020 Olympics, was canceled.
- The Singapore and Hong Kong legs of the World Rugby Sevens Series have been postponed from April to October.
AUSTRALIAN RULES FOOTBALL
- The Australian Football League said the game between St Kilda Saints and Port Adelaide Power scheduled for May 31 in China had been moved out of the country.
- Australian Rules club Fremantle Dockers said one of their players has been isolated and tested for the coronavirus after showing “flu-like” symptoms following contact with a friend who had been in China.
WEIGHTLIFTING
- The International Weightlifting Federation canceled the Asian Championships, scheduled to take place in Uzbekistan from April 16-25.
BASEBALL
- The World Baseball Softball Confederation postponed its final qualification tournament for the Olympics. The six-team event, originally scheduled for April 1-5 in Taiwan, will take place on June 17-21.
- Japan’s professional league decided to postpone the March 20 season opening, Japanese media reported citing Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB).
CRICKET
- The ICC postponed the men’s Cricket World Cup Challenge League A that was set to begin on March 16 in Malaysia.
ALPINE SKIING
- The Alpine skiing World Cup finals in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, scheduled for March 18-22, was canceled.
JUDO
- The International Judo Federation canceled all Olympic qualification events through to the end of April.
