How coronavirus pandemic has put the brakes on global sport

Football

• English Premier League suspended all fixtures until 4 April, with matches in the English Football League, Women’s Super League, all Scottish football and international friendlies for England and Wales also postponed.
• Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta and Chelsea winger Callum Hudson-Odoi tested positive for COVID-19.
• Spanish club Real Madrid’s players were put in quarantine as La Liga announced Spain’s top two divisions will be suspended for at least two weeks.
• Uefa postponed all Champions League and Europa League games next week.
• In Italy, the hardest-hit European country with 1 016 deaths from COVID-19, all sporting events including Serie A have been suspended until 3 April.
• On Wednesday, Juventus defender Daniele Rugani became the first Serie A footballer to test positive with Sampdoria forward Manolo Gabbiadini announcing that he had contracted the virus on Thursday.
• French football has been suspended “until further notice”, with the German Bundesliga also put on hold.
• The Netherlands’ Eredivisie has been suspended until 31 March.
• The Netherlands’ friendly against Spain set for 29 March cancelled. The United States has called off friendlies against the Dutch on 26 March and Wales (30 March).
• Other international friendlies to be played behind closed doors include France vs Ukraine and Germany vs Italy.
• The start of Japan’s J-League was postponed till mid-March while China suspended all domestic football and shelved indefinitely the top-flight Super League season.
• The French League Cup final between Paris Saint-Germain and Lyon has been called off, with no new date yet fixed, as has the Spanish Copa del Rey final between Real Sociedad and Athletic Bilbao.
• South American World Cup qualifiers have been postponed, as was the next round of the Copa Libertadores.
• The Fifa Congress, due to take place in Addis Ababa on 5 June, was pushed back to 18 September.

Tennis

• The ATP has suspended its tour for six weeks “due to escalating health and safety issues”.
• The ATP and WTA Miami Open was called off after Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez declared a state of emergency over the outbreak.
• The prestigious ATP and WTA Indian Wells tournament was cancelled, the first major sports event in the US to be shelved because of the outbreak.
• The inaugural Fed Cup Finals scheduled for next month in Budapest were postponed.

Golf

• The year’s opening men’s major, the Masters at Augusta National scheduled for 9 to 12 April, has been postponed.
• The Players Championship was cancelled after Thursday’s first round, with all PGA Tour events off until after the Masters.
• European Tour chiefs postponed the Maybank Championship in Malaysia and the China Open in Shenzhen — both set for April, and this week’s Kenyan Open.
• The US LPGA Tour cancelled all three of its lucrative early-season events in Asia, and also its next three events in the United States.
• The Indian Open in New Delhi, set for 19 to 22 March, was postponed on Wednesday.

Rugby Union

• The Six Nations match between Italy and England in Rome on Saturday, as well as the Ireland vs Italy duel in Dublin on 7 March, were postponed.
• All of the final round of matches have been put back until October, with Wales vs Scotland joining France’s game against Ireland and England’s trip to Italy in being postponed.
• Sevens World Series tournaments in Hong Kong on 3 to 5 April and Singapore the following weekend will now be played in October.
• Super Rugby, the southern hemisphere’s premier competition, is suspending its season after this weekend.

Motorsport

• Sunday’s season-opening Australian Grand Prix was called off early on Friday, with the Bahrain and Vietnamese races also postponed.
• The Chinese Grand Prix, which was set for 19 April in Shanghai, has been delayed.
• In motorcycling, the season-opening Qatar MotoGP was cancelled, along with the Thailand MotoGP on 22 March (postponed until 4 October). On Tuesday the Grand Prix of the Americas at Austin was rescheduled from April to November, while the MotoGP race in Argentina was also put on hold.
• IndyCar called off its first four planned races of the season.

Basketball

• NBA suspended the season after Utah Jazz’s Rudy Gobert tested positive for the new coronavirus. ESPN reported that his teammate Donovan Mitchell has also tested positive.
• NCAA “March Madness” to be closed to general public.

Athletics

• The World Indoor Championships, scheduled for Nanjing from 13 to 15 March, were postponed until 2021.
• The Paris Marathon, scheduled for 5 April with 60 000 registered runners, was postponed until 18 October.
• April’s London Marathon has also been postponed until October.
• — The Barcelona Marathon, which was scheduled for March 15 with 17,000 runners, was postponed until October 4.
• Boston Marathon moved from 20 April to 14 September.

Cycling

• The Giro d’Italia, the first Grand Tour of the season, was put on hold on Friday.
• The spring classic Milan-San Remo, scheduled for 21 March, was postponed, having only previously been cancelled three times since the inaugural edition in 1907.
• This month’s Tour of Cataluyna has been postponed, organisers announced on Thursday.

Tokyo Olympics

• World Athletics Sebastian Coe said the 2020 Tokyo Games will go ahead.
• Tokyo city governor Yuriko Koike said cancelling the Olympics is “unthinkable”.
• The Olympics take place from 24 July to 9 August.
• US President Donald Trump suggested the Olympics could be postponed for a year. “I like that better than I like having empty stadiums,” he said.

Cricket

• The start of India’s IPL, scheduled for 29 March, delayed until at least 15 April.
• The final two one day internationals between India and South Africa were scrapped, as was England’s tour of Sri Lanka.
• New Zealand abandoned their tour of Australia after Wellington tightened border controls. The final ODIs and T20 series were due to be played behind closed doors.

Alpine skiing

• Norway’s Aleksander Aamodt Kilde won alpine skiing’s men’s World Cup title after the final races of the season at Kranjska Gora at the weekend were scrapped.
• The World Cup finals, scheduled for Cortina d’Ampezzo in Italy between 16 to 22 March, were cancelled.
• This weekend’s three women’s races in Are were scrapped, crowning Federica Brignone as the overall champion.

Figure skating

• World championships, scheduled for Montreal next week, were cancelled.

Baseball

• Japan’s domestic baseball season, originally set to open on 10 March, was postponed.

Ice hockey

• The NHL commissioner Gary Bettman halted the competition on Thursday three weeks before the scheduled conclusion of the 2019/2020 regular season.
• The Women’s World Ice Hockey Championships, set for Halifax and Truro in Nova Scotia for 31 March to 10 April, were cancelled.

— By © Agence France-Presse