KILLINAN END - Sports calendar gradually emptying

KILLINAN END

 

Sports calendar gradually emptying

 

The sporting world, as with aspects of humanity, is taking a hit the extent of which is only gradually becoming apparent.

Maybe it’s something in the air in that part of the world but the Belgians and French were ahead of the curve. The French Open tennis normally takes place at the Roland-Garros arena in Paris normally in the last week in May and first week in June. A great event in an extraordinary city. A few weeks back the French changed the date to September-October. Even in country which is getting battered by Covid-19 the dates seem realistic. Or at least they don’t seem unnecessarily optimistic anyway. They might well turn out to be fanciful but organisers haven’t succumbed to the attractive idea that dawn will break one day and all of this will be over. Obviously the claw back of normal life will be slow and deliberate.

Near-neighbours Belgium announced a decision which will face many other countries in Europe in the coming months. In the Belgian soccer league, Club Brugge who were 15 points ahead at the top, were declared champions. There is an unusual system in Belgium where after 30 games the top six have their points tally halved (which has the effect of reducing gaps between them) and then play each other twice in a mini-championship. This means that despite Club Brugge’s huge lead there was still a fair few games left. It is doubtful that many would have expected them to lose an eight-point lead over just ten games considering that they had lost just one from 29 all season. Few would have quibbled with their value as champions, but many took issue with the process by which it happened.

UEFA, European soccer’s governing body, insists that there is scope to complete competitions across Europe in later summer/early autumn. Of course, unlike the GAA’s National League, which can effectively be unfinished without any particular consequences, the prospect of that happening in a professional environment where presumably a myriad of contracts and agreements are in play is an altogether more complex matter. However, an unpalatable decision may have to be taken at some stage by various countries whereby their national championship is won not on the field of play or else not at all. That in turn raises the question of how the Champions league places are to be filled for next season. Considering the amount of money at stake for a club which progresses in that competition that is not a decision without consequences either.

Perhaps in line with glacial pace of their government’s response the decision to cancel the Wimbledon Tennis Championships was late and considered. This was an event which had an aggregate attendance of half a million last year and goes on for a fortnight. That is not to even consider the amount of movement of people involved in its preparation. Unfortunately, unlike the French Open, this great tournament looks to have bitten the dust for this year. Uncertainty about the trajectory of the pandemic and its associated restrictions certainly make forward planning very difficult. For Wimbledon there is also the practical reality that a grass-court game is not an option outside of spring and summer. Especially when the English weather can be unkind.

The European soccer championship was perhaps the quietest casualty given its size and significance. As suggested here before maybe the fact that it was spread across many nations diluted the focus and meant that the decision-making was not influenced by or affecting just one country. It would have been a strange competition. England, for example, had they topped their group would have played a last 16 match in Dublin, a quarter-final in Rome, and then faced the tantalising prospect of a semi-final and final at Wembley. Then again, a slip up in the group would have seen them face a quarter-final in Russia.

Of course, this seems odd only in a European sense. London and St Petersburg are far apart indeed – well over a thousand miles - but had England topped their group at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil they would have travelled another thousand miles more than that for their next game in the very same country. It is to be hoped that this tournament can go ahead as scheduled next year and that we are not dealing with some kind of rebound from the pandemic.

In an Olympic year the Games themselves inevitably dwarf every other sport. They too are scheduled for a year down the road though in fairness they dogged it out for as long as possible before making the decision. Unlike the European championship this was destined for one single country and no doubt that made the decision or its timing more difficult. In the current context where people are dying and many are coming under huge economic pressure it seems tone-deaf to speak about sporting casualties. However, the Olympic Games will probably be the one where participants will take the biggest hit. Even though it’s deferred by only twelve months doubts about form and injury are now thrown into the mix.

Consider the story of Mary Decker. She was a track athlete born in New Jersey, USA, in 1958. By the end of 1972 when she was only fourteen years old she was already the top-ranked 800 metres runner in the USA, and ranked fourth in the world. Only her tender age disallowed her from going with the USA team to the Munich Olympics in ’72. Four years later the Olympic Games must have seemed ideal for her as they were held in Montreal just across the border in Canada. But by the time Games came along she was injured.

Just four years later when the Games were in Moscow she was just 21 years old but was precluded from going by the USA’s boycott. Still four years later with the Los Angeles Olympic Games in her backyard she was the golden girl for the USA as the event approached. She had won the 1,500 metres and the 3,000 metres at the inaugural World Athletics Championships in Helsinki a year earlier. However, in the 3,000 metres final in L.A. she fell and got injured and didn’t finish. A year later she broke the World Record for the 1,500 and it has been bettered only four times since. That is how good she was at her peak but an Olympic medal of any colour eluded her. It is a fate which surely awaits some Olympic athlete who is buzzing right now but will be in a different place in twelve months.