Coronavirus and the World Championships

[4everchan]

If they cancel and gave out refunds, they would lose a lot of money.

I'll be frank though, the ISU gives off the impression of doing a lot of performative CYA right now. Just doing enough which won't cost them that much money or get them sued. I see no indication that they've tried to encourage those from countries most stricken by the virus to not come to event preferring to just leave it to the government.

Here's a measure they could take to reduce total attendance and hence reduce potential spread. I would give out vouchers equal to double of the value of the tickets paid that can be redeemed for tickets to individual grand prix events. Since those events almost always have some empty seats and since many who take the voucher might not redeem it just like any gift card, they would not lose money doing this.

sorry but no... it is perhaps fair to those who were willing to travel from abroad to come to worlds... but for locals, like myself, i sunk enough money into the event KNOWING that 1) i didn't have to pay for transportation and hotel and 2) i didn't have to take time off from work to attend.. you can give me whatever vouchers you want, i will have to fly out, pay for accommodation and miss a week of work.... ISU should have insurances for such things... People get refunded all the time when a popstar cancels a show... everyone who has tickets should be refunded if the event is canceled

 

[beachmouse]

I'm watching a streaming replay of the first stage of the Paris-Nice cycling calendar and they just went through a big list of spring Italian races that typically lead up to the Giro d'Italia that had been cancelled because of the virus. The UAE Tour was also cancelled in the middle of it because of a suspected virus case.

I live in Florida, which is a highly transient place and often weird disease vector central (we had verified SARS at a local elementary school in 2003, y'all). It's also where a lot of older folks from both Canada and the northern tiers of American states spend their winters and it's very likely that a number of 'snowbirds' as they're called that are currently heading back to their other homes have been exposed to the virus here and given the long incubation times, I'm very much expecting virus clusters that pop up in Minnesota or Manitoba to be traced back to Florida snowbird communities.

 

[NaVi]

People get refunded all the time when a popstar cancels a show... everyone who has tickets should be refunded if the event is canceled

This would be a measure to reduce attendance and exposure if it goes on... not in the event of cancellation.

 

[ruga]

I believe that the best option would be just to hold WC with no audience. FS is not a contact sport so skaters won't get infected from each other provided that they keep some distance. ISU has enough money to let this one championship happen this way. Many events have very few people in the audience and they haven't gone bankrupt. They can cancel gala/award show if that's too expensive to organize.

 

[Ducky]

If it's not cancelled I'm planning on still going. Right now people in my company are still traveling for business but that can change -- we're basically setting up contingency plans if we all have to work from home -- so unless the State department issues a travel advisory against going to Quebec, or Brooklyn gets placed under quarantine (my poor service industry friends, I'm so worried about that) or my job says I can't go (in which case they are bloody well reimbursing me for my tickets!) I'm in.

But I've a friend who is a grad student whose told me that her university has basically said that anyone who travels right now will be expelled.

 

[removof]

Do you know when an official final decision will be arbitrated?

I think that they must organize WC with no audience.

 

[CaroLiza_fan]

Yeah, it's mostly money. But there's also still a long-ingrained sense that we're insulated from...well, everything really...by distance and general isolation (not just Australia as a whole from the rest of the world, but state to state too: it takes a day to travel from Melbourne to Adelaide by land and we still think of that, not the fact that it takes just over an hour by air). It's not true, and we really need to kick the she'll-be-right attitude for once before it kicks us back, but it's part of our mindset and informs decision-making more than it should.

Mmmmm.

To be honest, I did suspect that it was money. Whenever there has been talk over the years about the F1 or one of the bike races going elsewhere in Australia (e.g. the cars going back to Adelaide in SA; or the bikes going to new circuit The Bend in SA, or back to Eastern Creek in NSW), we always hear about how much the races generate for Melbourne.

But, I was surprised to hear that people from there think they are isolated from the outside world. I could understand that attitude if we were talking about people from Perth or elsewhere in WA. But Melbourne?! For goodness sake, Melbourne is one of the main entry points into Australia. And it is a major holiday destination in it's own right. It is anything but isolated!

I have to say, these are very worrying attitudes to take at times like this.

So, be careful.

CaroLiza_fan

 

[Harriet]

But, I was surprised to hear that people from there think they are isolated from the outside world. I could understand that attitude if we were talking about people from Perth or elsewhere in WA. But Melbourne?! For goodness sake, Melbourne is one of the main entry points into Australia. And it is a major holiday destination in it's own right. It is anything but isolated!

Trust me, the only people who want the cars back in Adelaide are the ones who want to make money off them here. The rest of us are trying to get rid of the race that's left!

But for the rest, it's not a conscious choice of attitude. The settler-colonialist version of this country started life as a prison colony where the whole point was being sent as far away from other people as possible. That was in the days when a sea journey to get here took months. The individual colonies were originally treated almost as separate countries because they were so far apart, and getting from one to another (or even getting news from one to another), especially when contrasted with the retroactively apparent 'smallness' of such places as England and Ireland, was what made us coin the phrase 'the tyranny of distance'. The sense of being fundamentally isolated from each other and from the rest of the world is a bone-deep element of non-Indigenous Australian identity that fifty years of postcolonialism hasn't been able to shake, even though intellectually we know it's not true any more; I'm not sure a disease is going to do it in a lot less than that...

Then there's the issue of the current mob in charge of the country. Let's just say that I don't think they have their priorities in order and leave it at that.

And yeah, WA and the NT might as well be separate countries. Lord knows the rest of us treat them like that often enough.

And before I go off-topic completely, all of this does matter more than theoretically in the skating context because of 4CC being in Sydney next year. Depending on the status of COVID-19 next year, progress toward a vaccine etc, we could still be dealing with some of these questions then. Though I hope not.

 

[Edwin]

The Quebec Minister of Health does not rule out asking to cancel the World Figure Skating Championships to be held from March 16 to 22 in Montreal, she said on Monday.

https://ici.radio-canada.ca/sports/...treal-menace-annulation-ministre-sante-mccann

 

[Danibellerika]

The Quebec Minister of Health does not rule out asking to cancel the World Figure Skating Championships to be held from March 16 to 22 in Montreal, she said on Monday.

https://ici.radio-canada.ca/sports/...treal-menace-annulation-ministre-sante-mccann

Cool story, bro. But can we know before we're, like, on planes headed there already?

 

[NaVi]

I think it should be completely out of the question that no World Champions are crowned. If they have to hold it in some random rinky dink ice rink with the hockey markings still on them and only the coaches and judges around then so be it.

 

[KOBOT37]

It can be easily arranged in Ladies, Just get Rika and the judges to Khrustalny

 

[CaroLiza_fan]

Cool story, bro. But can we know before we're, like, on planes headed there already?

That is actually what happened MotoGP rider Aleix Espargaro. He and his family were actually on the flight to Qatar when it was announced last Sunday that the race for the MotoGP class was cancelled. And he was raging when he found out after landing. But, since they were there now anyway, they stayed on for the race weekend. And in doing so, got to see some fantastic racing from the support classes.

CaroLiza_fan

 

[theharleyquinn]

I really wouldn't be surprised if we may be on the course to a Worlds without an audience.

 

[jenaj]

I really wouldn't be surprised if we may be on the course to a Worlds without an audience.

Ugh. I hope not.

 

[NanaPat]

Foreign countries and companies should not have been carrying out evacuations of their people. I know the intentions were honourable - "get our people out of the danger zone". But, all it was doing was potentially carrying the disease with them to other parts of the world. Instead, they should have been telling the people to stay put, and advising them on the precautions to take to try to prevent catching it.

CaroLiza_fan

I think the evacuation flights were not as bad as you think. They were followed by real quarantines and real testing. In Canada this took place in a hotel on a military base and in a separate wing of a military conference facility, where precautions were taken, including frequent temperature-taking and actual tests for the virus.

It's travellers returning on their own from "hot spots" who are being asked to self-isolate. For that to work, there needs to be follow-up and penalties for those who don't do so. And they need to be big penalties for those who can afford to pay big ones.

What made me cringe was people walking off the Diamond Princess into the general population when it had become clear that the virus was spreading like mad on the ship and the on-board "quarantine" was not a quarantine at all.

 

[chuckm]

If Worlds is cancelled, forget about getting ticket money refunded. NOT HAPPENING!!

 

[Taan]

Quebec discussing whether to cancel next week’s world figure skating championships
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/spo...er-to-cancel-next-weeks-world-figure-skating/

Quebec Health Minister Danielle McCann says the government is evaluating whether to allow the world figure skating championships to go ahead next week in Montreal.....

 

[WednesdayMarch]

If Worlds is cancelled, forget about getting ticket money refunded. NOT HAPPENING!!

Surely Skate Canada/the ISU/Evenko will be insured? Can they legally cancel without refunding?

 

[Edwin]

Surely Skate Canada/the ISU/Evenko will be insured? Can they legally cancel without refunding?

On government orders, equal to state of emergency, they probably can. If the event is postponed/moved, perhaps tickets can be carried forward?