Beijing ruled out, SportAccord turns to Europe

The news was expected. She didn't surprise anyone. The next edition of SportAccord, the most important global convention of the Olympic movement, will not take place in China. It was scheduled to take place in Beijing from April 19 to 24, 2020. It will have to change country and setting.

The organizers announced it on Thursday February 13 via a press release. Raffaele Chiulli, the Italian president of SportAccord, explains this by repeating a comment that has now become almost daily in international sport: “ Given the coronavirus outbreak in China and around the world, after consulting with the local organizing committee, we have made the difficult decision not to organize SportAccord 2020 in Beijing. But we believe that the Chinese government and people have all the capabilities to win the battle against the virus. »

SportAccord therefore joins the list, a little more extensive every day, of sporting events wiped off the map of China. It now concerns almost all disciplines. It now extends until the competitions or events planned for the month of April.

There is no question, however, of moving the international convention into the calendar. The organizers' press release specifies: SportAccord could be maintained on its initial dates, between April 19 and 24, 2020. " We are currently exploring all possible options”, assures Raffaele Chiulli.

With only two months and a handful of days before the event, there will not be many of them. SportAccord 2020 was expected to bring together nearly 2.000 delegates from all over the world in Beijing. A solid battalion of countries, institutions, organizations and companies had reserved a stand in the exhibition space.

It won't be easy to find a plan B. But the options exist. There would be two of them. The first presents an air of déjà vu. Lausanne, host of the convention in 2016, after replacing Sochi at short notice, applied. The event could take place at the Swiss Tech Convention Centre, used earlier this year for the IOC session on the sidelines of the 2020 Winter Youth Games.

Budapest is another alternative. The Hungarian capital seemed destined to organize SportAccord in 2019. It ultimately gave up. But the Hungarian authorities make no secret of their desire to establish Budapest as a hub for the sports movement, in particular by hosting international conventions and forums. The forced withdrawal from Beijing for the 2020 edition offers them an opportunity to advance a new pawn.

One question remains: will the effects of the coronavirus epidemic soon spread to the rest of the Asian continent? Several countries in Southeast Asia are already affected by competition cancellations.

The Professional Golf Players Association (LPGA) has already drawn a line under a tour tournament in Pattaya, Thailand, and another in Singapore. World Rugby has just announced that the stages of the HSBC Sevens Series scheduled for the first half of April in Hong Kong and Singapore have been postponed until October. The Vietnam Formula 1 Grand Prix, scheduled for April 5, is also under threat.

The Tokyo 2020 Games? The subject has come back to the organizers like a boomerang since last week. Japan currently has around 200 positive cases. More than XNUMX passengers on a cruise ship quarantined off the coast of Japan have been infected.

Worse: the country's authorities formalized, this Friday, February 14, the first death due to the coronavirus. A Japanese woman aged over 80 died this week. She lived in Kanagawa prefecture, not far from Tokyo. She had never traveled abroad.