And now finally tennis?
The Australian Open, the first Grand Slam tournament of the season, is due to start on Monday, February 8.
The organizers did everything they could to ensure that the competition took place, at the cost of drastic sanitary conditions which put a strain on the nerves of the tennis players and tennis players.
Australia has indeed resumed a relatively normal life, with the exception of one-off and localized confinements, to the point of being one of the few countries in the world that can afford to allow the public to sport events.
Between 25,000 and 30,000 spectators should also be able to attend the Australian Open matches.
>> Read also on France24.com: Covid-19: for sport, 2021 promises to be another year of uncertainties
Strict and binding rules and offshored qualifications
To make the event acceptable to local authorities, the Australian Federation has enacted very strict and very restrictive health rules.
Qualifying for the tournament, traditionally played the week before the tournament in Melbourne, took place in Dubai for women and Doha for men, from January 10 to 13.
The qualifiers were thus able to take one of the 18 charters specially chartered between January 15 and 17 so that the 1,270 athletes could reach Australia.
They were then transferred to their hotels in Melbourne for a compulsory fortnight.
Only breathing for the players: a range of five hours of outing to train.
The tournament then experienced its first alert: positive cases aboard three of the charters forced the Australian Open to confine 72 players under very strict conditions, without exits and without training.
What gradually undermine morale, forced to be content with bodybuilding exercises.
Or to train against a mattress.
“At first, it was fine, says Alexandre Muller, 23, to the
Parisian
.“ From the sixth or seventh day, it started to be hard.
The same meals, the same physical sessions.
Mentally, it was complicated. "
See this post on Instagram
A post shared by Marcelo Arévalo González (@marceloarevaloatp)
Sailing Through Last Days Of Quarantine ⛵️😅🎾 pic.twitter.com/1ABx2Xuoj3
- Ons Jabeur (@Ons_Jabeur) January 27, 2021
VIP confinement in Adelaide?
The elite of world tennis has been housed in Adelaide to play an exhibition tournament.
Several people questioned the fairness of the tournament, claiming that the athletes within this "VIP bubble" enjoyed much better conditions than the rest of the players.
Novak Djokovic's attempt, as chief trade unionist - he created the Professional Tennis Players Association (PTPA) in the summer of 2020 - to get conditions for his colleagues in Melbourne improved has not helped.
He received a firm "no" from the Prime Minister of Victoria and drew taunts from players.
"Since Adelaide? Ahhahah," Stan Wawrinka mocked, commenting on a tweet publishing the grievances made by the world number 1 to the Australian Federation (Tennis Australia, TA).
The Swiss thus suggests that, despite official denials, the quarantine would be much more favorable in Adelaide where "Djoko" is located than in Melbourne.
From Adelaide?
Ahhahah
- Stanislas Wawrinka (@stanwawrinka) January 17, 2021
On their social networks, the players had fun making fun of their Spartan conditions.
"A prison with Wi-Fi", compared Roberto Bautista before having to apologize, in front of the outcry.
New alert during preparatory tournaments
While the end of the tunnel seemed in sight for the players with the exit of fortnight and the start of the preparatory tournaments, the mechanics seized again on February 3 with the discovery of a case of Covid-19 among the staff of the Grand Hyatt, one of the quarantine hotels in Melbourne.
Again, 507 people - players and staff - had to submit to the tests and were forced to isolate themselves in a hotel room while receiving the results.
With a happy outcome however, no new cases detected.
Some hastened to publish their negative result on social media.
"After a negative result, it's good to go to the gym," comments Frenchwoman Caroline Garcia with a photo showing her lifting a dumbbell.
"Negative and free again ...", Fabio Fognini welcomes a selfie taken in the street.
According to former world number 1 Jim Courrier, consultant for Tennis Channel, this new episode will further damage the minds of the players concerned.
"They've already spent a lot of psychic energy trying to get into the right mental state. Some have told me they don't have much left. So it's going to be a very hard mental test," he said. -He underlines.
Benoît Paire, for example, has the impression that fate is hitting him, after being confined in his room during the entire US Open in September 2020. This time, upon his arrival in Melbourne, he was put on trial. strict isolation without authorization to leave for fourteen days for having been a case-contact on the plane.
"As luck would have it, one more day of isolation for the players who were at Hyatt and in your opinion I was in which hotel ???? !!!!!!! #PASDECHATTE PS: it's getting complicated to play tennis… I'm going to avoid saying what I think about the Covid because I'm going to annoy a lot of it, ”tweeted the Frenchman, who hopes to finally be able to do his job: playing tennis.
As luck would have it, one more day of isolation for the players who were at the Hyatt and in your opinion I was in which hotel ???? !!!!!!!
#Hyatt #PASDECHATTE PS: it's getting complicated to play tennis .. I'm going to avoid saying what I think about Covid because I'm going to piss off a lot
- pair benoit (@benoitpaire) February 4, 2021
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