Thus, the red light is in Melbourne, the framework that will host, or so it is intended, the first major event in Season 8 (next Monday) to the 21st of this month. “The championship is important to us, but the problem is much broader, it is a public health and safety issue. We must assume that this person has infected others,” Andrews assumed, while making the order. The immediate isolation of up to 600 people among the players, officials and workers of the tournament They may have been in contact with the 26-year-old who might inadvertently set off the plan. For now, those affected will have to undergo tests and the Australian Tennis Federation (Tennis Australia) has canceled all preparatory events scheduled for Thursday.

That is, in Melbourne Park, activity will freeze after two days the players have been preparing and the show takes shape. No ATP Cup Day or other events will be played, and tennis will be in suspense because with four days remaining before the start PioneerThe shock and its potential consequences could destroy the logistical efforts so far. It is, after all, a warning to him Sports planetTrapped by conditions that occur today in Australia but can be reproduced in any other corner of the world, in a year when summer is viewed constantly.

There is Tokyo and its games (from July 23 to August 8), or the European Cup men’s football (June 11 to July 11) and this multi-site format (12 different cities) that seems more vulnerable if possible to the traps that the virus is spreading here and there. Leaders of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) And world sports follow events with a mass in their throats. If this happens in Australia, which is an exemplary example of containment, what cannot happen elsewhere?

To date, the peripheral country (of 25 million people) has recorded 28,829 cases and 909 deaths, based on strict border restrictions and strict enforcement of the protocol over the past eleven months. For 28 days, the state of Victoria, where Melbourne is safely seated, has not reversed a single case of relocation. However, this minimal comfort at the Grand Hyatt puts tennis on watch and darkens the near horizon, pending the results of the exams due this morning.

Without going further, Spaniards Roberto Bautista, Pablo Carreno, Carlos Alcaraz and Garbini Muguruza stayed there. not like that Raphael NadalThree of the lucky few who completed quarantine in the Adelaide Bubble, Novak Djokovic and Serena Williams, were less confined and accompanied by their teams and families. Precisely there, only six days ago they took part An exhibition in which 4,000 spectators gathered without masks and without maintaining a safety distance, In what was thought the aperitif of what could happen in Melbourne over the next two weeks.

The precedent of “polluted” flights

Now, everything is in the air. They are considered regular contacts. They should immediately isolate themselves and get tested. ”Minister Andrews asserted the same integrity with which the Australian government recently expressed themselves, drawing a line for the organizers. There will be tennis, but according to our rules and according to our terms, they were told a few months ago, when it was announced. Also, the Open Championship was three weeks behind schedule.

It remains to be seen what will happen in the PCR report that will be carried out on Thursday, the presence of a tennis player or a component of his team (technicians or physicists) was revealed. A priori, Another 14-day confinement will be imposed And everything could go to hell. As a precedent, the authorities were outspoken when positive cases were detected on three of the 17 flights that the Australian Tennis Association had chartered to facilitate landings in the country (between January 14 and 15), although they were not directly from the tennis players. Then it was decided to prevent 72 injured people in their rooms for 15 days, without exit or exception.

“Quarantine for 14 days It’s not perfect, but it is what we must do now. I think Australia is an example of how to do things and I can only congratulate them. “I really miss playing in a stadium with so many people,” Nadal said after speaking at It was From Adelaide. The 34-year-old Mallorcan maintains a liturgy for the other years and stays at the Crown Towers with his family, awaiting instructions and what might happen. Lower back pain, before the alarm rang, announced on #Vamos that he would not compete with Greece on the second day of the ATP Cup.

“I’m not a killer, but I don’t think I’m good enough to play, especially in team competition,” said the second seed, one of the 1,200 tennis family members (including referees, players and team members) who landed three weeks ago on Australian soil. . Now, all of them will live a Thursday of Agony.