BEIJING • China will not hold most international sporting events for the rest of this year as part of measures to slow the spread of the coronavirus, the Chinese government said yesterday, dealing a potential blow to the likes of Formula One and tennis.
Shanghai's sports authority recently said that it had been offered two F1 races this year, while several tournaments in China are on the revised tennis calendar.
But China, where the Covid-19 disease is thought to have emerged late last year before becoming a pandemic, appears to have ruled out many of those events, despite local infections dwindling markedly.
The General Administration of Sport (GAS) said in a statement that, except for Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic test events "and other important events, in principle, no other international sports events will be held this year".
China's highest sporting authority did not specify which competitions will be hit, but the official Xinhua news agency claimed that "lots of international sport events will be affected".
This year's global sporting calendar has been badly disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic, with the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games and Euro 2020 pushed back to next summer.
China was earmarked to host a number of tennis events later this year in a revised schedule - the ATP and WTA Tours have been on ice since March, and both circuits will resume only next month.
That includes the WTA's Wuhan Open in October. Wuhan is the original epicentre of the pandemic and staging the annual tournament there would be hugely symbolic.
The fate of that event and the season-ending WTA Finals, which moved from Singapore to Shenzhen last year after a five-year stint in the Republic, have now been thrown into grave doubt, along with the China Open in Beijing and the prestigious Shanghai Masters. Both ATP events were due to take place in October.
It is also unclear whether the Chinese Grand Prix, initially scheduled for April, can go ahead.
Reports had pencilled in an October date for the postponed race before GAS' announcement and according to Autosport, F1 is due to announce the expansion of its initial eight-race calendar.
Domestically, the Chinese Super League (CSL) football season was due to kick off on Feb 22, but became one of the earliest sporting victims of the pandemic when it was postponed indefinitely in January.
The CSL will now begin on July 25 under a different format, in which the 16 teams will be split into two groups located in two cities, Suzhou and Dalian, to limit the risk of infection.
It follows the return of the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA) competition on June 20 - the first major league to return to action in the country following the crisis.
Like the CBA, CSL games will take place behind closed doors.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
