The novel coronavirus pandemic has already affected and reshaped the professional sports landscape in Europe and is now forcing cancellation and postponement of sporting events across the globe. Many matches are taking place in the absence of spectators as a preventive measure to stop the outbreak to spread.
Here is a list of international sports events hit by the coronavirus pandemic:
OLYMPICS
The Olympics were postponed for the first time in their history until 2021, it was announced after a joint meeting between the organisers and IOC. A new date is yet to be be announced.
The European, American and final world qualifying boxing tournaments for the Tokyo Olympic Games were suspended on 16 March by the International Olympic Committee.
The Tokyo 2020 Olympics torch lighting ceremony in ancient Olympia was held without spectators.
The Hellenic Olympic Committee (HOC) suspended the remainder of the Torch relay through the country to avoid attracting crowds.
OLYMPIC TRIALS
US Olympic trials for wrestling, originally scheduled for 4-5 April at Penn State University, were postponed.
US Rowing postponed its Olympic team trials and will not run a national team event for 30 days.
US Olympic diving trials, which were scheduled for 3-5 April in Tucson, Arizona, were postponed. All USA Diving events postponed for the next 30 days.
NORTH AMERICA
The NBA has suspended its season until further notice. Two players, Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell of Utah Jazz, tested positive earlier this week. Detroit Pistons' Christian Wood has also reportedly tested positive.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said Thursday night that the league’s hiatus because of the coronavirus pandemic will likely last at least a month.
The NHL has suspended its season.
The MLB will delay its 2020 season’s opening day of 26 March by at least two weeks. It said Spring Training camps were also suspended.
ATHLETICS
The Diamond League has called off its first three track meets of the season.
The World Athletics Indoor Championships, scheduled for Nanjing from 13-15 March, have been postponed until next year.
The Paris and Barcelona marathons have been postponed.
The annual London marathon which was due to take place on 26 April was postponed to 4 October.
The race walking team championship scheduled for 2-3 May in Minsk was postponed.
FOOTBALL
UEFA bowed to the inevitable on Wednesday and suspended all Champions League and Europa League football matches “until further notice” due to the coronavirus pandemic.European football's governing body also said all national team games scheduled for June have been postponed, including playoff matches for Euro 2020, which has been moved to 2021.
UEFA pushed the Euro 2020 competition from 2020 for 12 months. The 12-team tournament will now take place from 11 June - 11 July, 2021.
Germany’s Bundesliga and second division will pause at least until 2 April and possibly beyond due to the coronavirus.
All the remaining 28 matches of the I-League, including Sunday's marquee Kolkata derby between champions Mohun Bagan and East Bengal, will be played in empty stadiums owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, the All India Football Federation said on Friday.
Chelsea forward Callum Hudson-Odoi has tested positive for the coronavirus and all first-team players and coaching staff will now self-isolate, the Premier League club said.
All elite soccer matches in England, including the Premier League, Football League (EFL) and Women’s Super League (WSL), were suspended until 4 April.
However, the National League - the fifth-tier of English football - said all its weekend’s matches will go ahead, including the lower level Conference North and South divisions.
The Confederation of African Football has postponed two rounds of the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers scheduled for 25-31 March.
CONCACAF suspended all competitions scheduled to take place over the next 30 days, including the Champions League and men’s Olympic qualifiers.
The Paraguayan FA has suspended all games until 24 March and recommended that clubs stop collective training sessions.
The Colombian league has suspended all tournaments until further notice.
The Chilean FA ordered all games due to be played between 19 March and 19 April take place without fans.
The top two tiers of French football — Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 — have been suspended until further notice.
All soccer matches in Spain’s top two divisions were postponed for two weeks.
England’s friendly internationals against Italy and Denmark at Wembley on 27 and 31 March will not take place, while Denmark cancelled their 27 March friendly against the Faroe Islands.
The Norwegian Football Federation said it did not plan to hold Norway’s Euro 2020 playoff match against Serbia that was scheduled for 26 March.
Poland’s soccer league has postponed all games at least until the end of March. The resumption date is expected to be announced next week.
US Major League Soccer has suspended its season.
US Soccer’s Open Cup Committee has suspended its 2020 Lamar Hunt US Open Cup.
All football in the Netherlands was suspended until the end of March. The national team cancelled their Euros warm-up matches against the United States (26 March) and Spain (29 March).
FIFA and the Asian Football Confederation have agreed to postpone Asian World Cup qualifying matches in March and June.
FIFA said South American qualifying matches between 23-31 March for the 2022 World Cup were postponed.
* Bundesliga: Borussia Moenchengladbach v Cologne (11 March) was played without fans. RB Leipzig v SC Freiburg and Borussia Dortmund v Schalke 04 (both 14 March) will be played in empty stadiums.
Spain’s Copa del Rey final between Athletic Bilbao and Real Sociedad (Seville; 18 April) was postponed.
New seasons in the Chinese, Japanese and South Korean leagues were postponed.
A four-team event in Doha featuring Croatia, Portugal, Belgium and Switzerland (26-30 March) was cancelled.
A friendly between Germany and Italy (Nuremberg; 31 March) will take place without fans.
Tickets are not being sold for the Euro 2020 qualifying playoff semi-finals between Bulgaria and Hungary and Bosnia and Northern Ireland.
Asian Champions League: Matches involving Chinese clubs Guangzhou Evergrande, Shanghai Shenhua and Shanghai SIPG were postponed. The start of the knockout rounds was moved back to September.
The Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) ordered all games due to be played in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo to take place without fans until further notice.ue
BASKETBALL
Euroleague Basketball suspended all 2019-20 EuroLeague, EuroCup and Euroleague Next Generation Tournament games.
HORSE RACING
The Dubai World Cup, one of the world’s richest horse races and a premier annual sporting event in the United Arab Emirates, will not go ahead this year.
MOTORSPORT
The Azerbaijan Grand Prix was postponed on Monday because of the coronavirus outbreak, delaying the start of the Formula One season until the middle of June at the earliest.
The Monaco Grand Prix was among three more Formula One races to be postponed because of the coronavirus outbreak.
Formula One have cancelled the Australian Grand Prix and postponed the next three races in Bahrain, Vietnam and China. They hope to start the season in Europe at the end of May, putting the Dutch and Spanish races currently scheduled for 3 and 10 May in Zandvoort and Barcelona in doubt.
Four rounds of the MotoGP season in Qatar, Thailand, Texas and Argentina will not go ahead as scheduled. Spanish GP, scheduled for May, was also postponed.
NASCAR races at the Atlanta Motor Speedway (15 March) and Homestead-Miami Speedway (22 March) will be held without fans.
The Indianapolis 500 has been postponed from May to 23 August.
Round four of the World Rally Championship in Argentina that was scheduled for 23-26 April has been postponed.
The World Rallycross Championship opener in Catalunya-Barcelona scheduled for 18-19 April has been postponed.
TENNIS
Tennis fans and the calendar received a double blow when both the men's (ATP) and the women's (WTA) tours were postponed until 13 July. Central to the development was Wimbledon getting cancelled for the first time since 1945 (due to second World War), due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The ATP suspended its professional men’s tennis tour for six weeks after the Miami Open (23 March- 5 April 5) was cancelled.
The Fed Cup finals (Budapest; 14-19 April) were postponed.
The BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells was cancelled.
The WTA said its events in Mexico and Colombia in March and April would not be held. The Xi’an Open and Kunming Open had already been cancelled.
The WTA later joined the ATP and ITF in suspending tournaments due to the growing coronavirus pandemic until 2 May.
Roland Garros, second grand slam of the tennis season, has been postponed from an 18 May start to 20 September.
RUGBY
Four Six Nations matches were postponed.
The Singapore and Hong Kong legs of the World Rugby Sevens Series were postponed from April to October.
Rugby Europe announced a suspension of all its matches and tournaments from 13 March to 15 April.
France’s rugby federation said on Friday that it was suspending all its competitions.
The Premiership Rugby Cup final on Sunday (15 March) has been postponed.
Super Rugby will also be put on hold after weekend due to fears over the coronavirus outbreak.
Australia's National Rugby League became one of the last professional contact sports to shut down.
ROWING
Two World Rowing Cups and the European Olympic Qualification Regatta, all scheduled for Italy, were cancelled./
SAILING
SailGP has canceled its San Francisco event scheduled for 2-13 May.
TABLE TENNIS
The world championships in South Korea, were pushed back provisionally from March to June.
WINTER SPORTS
The International skiing federation cancelled the final races of the men’s Alpine skiing.
The World Cup finals in Cortina were cancelled along with the last three women’s races in Are.
The women’s world ice hockey championships in Canada were cancelled.
The Speed skating world championships in Seoul have been postponed until at least October.
The March 16-22 world figure skating championships in Montreal were cancelled.
GOLF
The year’s first major, the Masters, has been postponed from 9-12 April to ‘some later date’.
The Players Championship in Florida was cancelled after the first round. The next three PGA events have also been scrapped.
The Honda LPGA Thailand event and the HSBC Women’s World Championship in Singapore were cancelled.
The Indian Open, the Maybank Championship in Kuala Lumpur and the China Open have all been postponed.
CYCLING
The final two stages of the UAE Tour were cancelled after two Italian participants tested positive.
The Paris-Nice cycling race will end a day early after the eighth stage into Nice was cancelled.
The Giro d’Italia, scheduled to start in Budapest, Hungary on 9 May, has been postponed.
BASEBALL
The final qualification tournament in Taiwan for the Olympics was put back from April to 17-21 June, while the 22-26 March qualification event in Arizona was postponed.
Japan’s professional league postponed the start of the season.
CRICKET
Australia’s three-match one-day series against New Zealand in Sydney and Hobart is being held without fans. Meanwhile, Australia women's tour to South Africa has been postponed indefinitely.
The Pakistan and Bangladesh cricket boards decided to postpone the upcoming One-Day International and Test in Karachi indefinitely amid the COVID-19 pandemic
The ongoing COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic affected another major sporting event on Friday with the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2020 being postponed to 15 April from 29 March.
The two remaining ODIs between India and South Africa in Lucknow and Kolkata were on Friday called off owing to the COVID-19 threat as the country's sports calendar continued to go haywire because of the global pandemic.
England cancelled their Test series in Sri Lanka due to global coronavirus pandemic
Cricket Australia cancelled Sheffield Shield, the country’s top first-class league, due to the rising threat of COVID-19 pandemic, according to a report. The board, however, deferred the decision on the final.
Cricket South Africa suspended all forms of the game for a period of 60 days on Monday, 16 March after the government banned gatherings larger than 100 people in response to the threat of the coronavirus outbreak.
JUDO
The International Judo Federation cancelled all Olympic qualification events through to the end of April.
GYMNASTICS
The All-Around World Cup (Stuttgart; 20-22 March) was cancelled.
HANDBALL
The International Handball Federation has postponed all competitions in March, April and June.
The European Handball Federation said matches until 12 April will not be held as scheduled.
SQUASH
The Professional Squash Association said World Tour and Challenger Tour events taking place up to and including the week commencing 27 April will not take place.
BADMINTON
The Badminton World Federation (BWF) has suspended all BWF World Tour and other BWF-sanctioned tournaments from 16 March until 12 April.
The India Open badminton tournament was on Friday suspended at least till 12 April after the Badminton World Federation (BWF) decided to halt all events from 16 March due to the coronavirus pandemic.
MIXED MARTIAL ARTS
The UFC has postponed its next three scheduled events through 11 April, finally giving up on president Dana White's plan to keep fighting amid the coronavirus pandemic.
ARCHERY
World Archery on 26 March extended the suspension of international competitions until the end of June after Tokyo Olympics were postponed to next year.
CHESS
FIDE on 26 March stopped the Candidates tournament in Yekatrinburg, Russia at halfway stage after the hosts decided to ban all flights into and out of the country owing to the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.
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With inputs from Reuters
from Firstpost Sports Latest News https://ift.tt/3dkuNT4
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