Yesterday, a meeting was held with winter sports competitions in China as a topic of conversation.
The International Ski Federation (Fis) and the organizers have a hard time finding a solution.
Due to the fact that everyone who travels to China must be quarantined for 14 days, it seems that the World Cup competitions in cross-country skiing, biathlon and ski jumping must be turned into competitions with only Chinese athletes.
Then you have to test the courses before the Olympics in Beijing 2022, but not in the way that was intended.
- Athletes, coaches, servicemen or whatever, all have a quarantine period.
Given the current situation, the proposal is to hold some of the test events as national, Chinese competitions with Chinese athletes.
To test the tracks and slopes, says Jürg Capol and continues:
- But in ski jumping, for example, it would be good to have high-quality ski jumpers who test the slope.
In principle, a World Cup competition is required to be sure that the slope is correct.
It is perhaps easier in, for example, cross-country skiing, where you can have Chinese athletes.
World Cup competitions may disappear
No decision has been made, but if the World Cup competitions are canceled, they will be replaced by competitions in another place.
It can, for example, be that you extend a stay at an existing world cup.
Another major problem ahead of the winter is that the World Freestyle and Snowboard Championships are scheduled to take place in Chinese Zhangjiakou in February.
It would thus be both a world championship and a pre-Olympics.
There, Capol has a proposal:
- It would be decided in February 2021, but what I think there is that perhaps it should be postponed until December 2021. In fact, the key factor is the quarantine period of 14 days and they say that it is a government decision.
Sports federations, or whoever organizes competitions, can not influence it.
- As for the World Cup, it must be an international competition and you must be sure that the athletes can and want to come.
Then the 14-day quarantine would kill everything.
Most sports have already been decided on in the resort in the context of the World Cup, but skricross and snowboardcross have never been ridden in Zhangjiakou.
If the World Cup is postponed until December, it will only be weeks before the World Cup is decided in the same place.
ARCHIVE: Harlaut's corona strategy: tented for 1.5 months (October 7, 2020)
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Harlaut's corona strategy: tented for 1.5 months