UCI's decision to make participation voluntary key to race cancellation
www.cyclingnews.com
So it has been confirmed that it was a riders/team based decision to cancel the Tour Down Under rather than the race organisers deciding themselves.
The length of quarantine is definitely an issue. I think that in Australia our aim now must be total elimination of the virus. In Victoria – where we have had the highest numbers and the harshest restrictions – we have had 0 – yes, 0 – new cases in the last four days. Out total number of active cases are down to just 38, with almost all of these being known, and I believe in hotel quarantine. Australia overall probably has less than 100 active cases of covid now.
It will be interesting to see if the Australian Open tennis goes ahead. This is obviously a much bigger deal than the Tour Down Under (even someone like myself, as an Australian who enjoys watching cycling, doesn’t care much at all about the TDU) and it seems somewhat farcical that the US Open and French Open were just played, in places that have thousands upon thousands of active covid cases, yet the Australian Open could be cancelled. But maybe that is partly the point; that covid cannot be controlled at all in America and Europe – hence the having to live with it – whereas in Australia elimination is possible. I only say possible, not probable, because it is unlikely, since we still have people forever filtering back into the country from overseas, and you can’t exactly stop them from re-entering. As we have seen in Victoria, hotel quarantine is no guarantee of keeping covid at bay, for there is human nature….
I suggested a long time ago, that so long as you don’t have male security guards weighing more than 80 kgs, nor female security guards weighing under 80 kgs, then you probably won’t have any problems!
As far as horse racing goes, it is pretty scary the level of pull that the industry – backed enormously by betting agencies – must have with Government. I will give you a good example. AFL (Australian Rules Football) is basically a religion over here, or at least it is in the states of Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia. Yet when the pandemic started to gather steam in March, the season – which was just one week old – was put on hold. Yet Horse Racing – which in reality far less people properly care about (a lot of it is more for the punting and drinking) – continued on. Yes, there were some other factors. Some state Governments banned Victorians from entering I believe, or at least without quarantining, making week to week football fixtures nigh on impossible until a hub was developed. Whereas I guess, horses wouldn’t normally travel interstate. But this isn’t the case with big races, and our biggest race is today, the Melbourne Cup. And there are international horses racing, I believe. And I could be wrong, but I am pretty sure that horses don’t choose to race themselves. Yes, there are strappers, trainers, owners, and so forth, all probably flying over here, for “the big race”.
Yet, the Australian Open, one of the world’s biggest tennis tournaments, might not go ahead.
Money talks. Actually it screams. In March (and even more so in June/July) everything in Melbourne stopped. Everything in Melbourne stopped that wasn’t necessary. How could one consider horse racing necessary in comparison to much of what was put on hold?
Not only is horse racing unnecessary, but it is unethical. Money, money, money. Must be funny? No, not always.