It's been obvious that sooner or later this devastating virus will affect sport events as well. Today I got the confirmation of that.
The World Indoor Athletics championships should be taking place in Nanjing in March, on the 13th. This date has been set a long time ago, so no one knew at that time what's going to happen. Now however the situation is different. There's still one month to go till then but the event has been postponed to next year. At first they wanted to relocate the event but they thought it's best to postpone. The Athletics Association already cancelled its Indoor Championships because Hangzhou is 600km from Wuhan.
The Tokyo Olympics will be taken place in July, i don't think anyone wants to take unnecessary risks. Brits said initially they are planning to send a small group of athletes as I believe the important ones wanted to train for the Olympics. Now there's no event to participate at.
However, coronavirus is not hitting only athletics, but also formula one as two of the first four races at serious risk. Both the Chinese and Vietnamese Grand Prixs are set to be cancelled.
This is a disaster and not because all these events must be cancelled or postponed but because of the danger this coronavirus means. Even if these events are going to take place, I don't know who is going to participate, honestly. I remember the 2016 Rio Olympics, zika virus was a huge problem and there were athletes who had to skip the event because they were afraid of getting sick.
I don't know when this terrible outbreak is going to end but I hope it'll be very soon as it affects the whole Wold directly and indirectly. I don't even want to think of the financial implications.