All events in March cancelled, more to follow…
Had to happen didn’t it? NBA evaporated, Formula 1 shuttered, talk show hosts playing to empty studios and cranked up laugh tracks. Old people shoved into death ghettoes by thrill-kill millennials. Planes grounded. School children sent home to mediate on the apocalypse in front of television sets.
So it don’t come as any sorta surprise that the comically named Corona Open, Gold Coast, meant to start March 26, has been put on ice, with all surfers being sent a text this morning letting ’em know that all remaining events in March, including Snapper and the Piha event, have been cancelled.
From the WSL,
“Coronavirus is having massive consequences for sporting events and gatherings of all kinds around the world, and we are no different,” said WSL CEO Erik Logan. “We did not take this decision lightly as we are aware that it has a significant impact on the surfing community. However, the health and safety of our athletes, fans, and staff are paramount. From the standpoint of social responsibility, we also take very seriously the role our events might play in accelerating the spread of the virus. We’ve been in close contact with our athletes and we feel strongly that this is the right thing to do right now.”
“The fluid nature of this situation is forcing us to evaluate things day-by-day, and even hour-by-hour,” Logan said. “As this continues to evolve, we’ll continue to adapt, endeavoring to make the next right decision each day.”
Based on the information we have at this time, we are not currently canceling any additional events beyond this time frame. That said, the situation continues to evolve, and we are closely monitoring and evaluating the status of our upcoming events, including our next CT event at Bells Beach in Victoria, Australia.
More from tour correspondent, Longtom, soon.
+ 100 thanks for posting this.
I am a subspecialist MD who is pretty well read at this point on this topic – over the past few weeks. And by well-read I mean of scientific papers and expert opinions of epidemiologists, not blog comments, half-baked conspiracy theories or ignorant comparisons of this virus to the flu. The freight train moving towards you in the tunnel looks very, very tiny when its still a mile away, even though it is accelerating with each week that goes by….This virus is 10x deadlier than the flu, which already is deadly enough to kill tens of thousands of Americans each year. The death rate of respiratory illnesses is usually kept down with advanced medical care – including a limited number of ventilators used for when you can’t breathe on your own. If even 200,000 people suddenly need 60,000 ICU beds all at the same time, we are fucked. And it won’t just be your grandma dying, it will be a situation where anyone who is sick is all competing for maxed out capacity health care at the same time. Folks with post-op complications, heart attack and stroke victims, people in car accidents, you name it- their death rates will increase as well.
It’s fun to mock the worried well and joke about cheap air fares and such, but I would urge everyone reading to take this event seriously.
At the very least, please listen to Sam Harris interviewing an expert with some information based on actual science
https://samharris.org/podca…
Then you can decide if everyone who is concerned is a snowflake pussy and it’s all an overblown hoax
Can I get Corona virus from a wave pool?
I can understand the decision. Having event in public places you can’t ban the spectators.
25,000 people lose their lives every day as a result of hunger.
That adds up to roughly 9.1 million people who die of starvation each year.
This hysteria is all about money.
Let the poor die but if the consumers are affected by something the capitalists freak out and crash the stock market which inturn secures the wealth of the 1%
ain’t capitalism grand. I luurrrvvvvvves it.
Its NOT a fucking pandemic….
I m a bit toey.
I think the fucking pandemic started in the60s with the pill and ended mid 80s when it all got a bit germy.
Yeah that Michael Osterholm Poddy really pulled my head out of the sand.
Did the Sydney comp not get the memo? Why is it still running? Seems weird.
doomed anyway
Not sponsored by Corona?
Yes, definitely
They were virtually unheard of 120 yrs ago and with an increase of car breeding their unstoppable virus has taken the world over
“ The fluid nature of this situation…”
I see what he did there.
Fluid Drive?
Probably more like a Wankle engine.
Thirty people in the water just then!
Will the WSL somehow make more money if there are no events? Serious question.
They will lose less money.
How do you make a small fortune owning the WSL?
By insuring against potential losses and then getting a Chinese virus factory to make and spread it’s contagium…
Start with a large fortune and quit while something is still left.
Well put…….
No. They’ll get flogged unless they can somehow hedge off some of the costs. The events are the only thing making them any money at all.
I assumed the huge cost of running the events was almost meant to be a loss-leader for media productions.
Oh man there’s a history here, but briefly: WSL first phase, Paul Speaker, spend as much as you possibly can on the contests!!! So we can get lots of money from all the non endemic umbrella sponsors! He did. They didn’t. WSL second phase, Sophie, get out there and cut costs and make the contests break even!!! So we can spend all the money building wave pools instead! She did. They didn’t. WSL third phase, Erik! The contests are ticking over but the wave pool thing is bogging! Make us into a media company!!!
It’s the media/content thing that’s costing the money right now, not so much the contests.
You can guess where this will end now can’t ya.
Whoever thought that get sent thing was a good idea was a moron.
ha ha I almost feel the epitaph to all this will be, “So many smart people, so many stupid ideas”
It’s time to pop a Corona boys and girls
Did Nero drink while Rome was burning, no!
Well maybe, but who plays a fiddle while drinking?
Most hillbilly fiddle players would be at least half pissed on moonshine, surely..
Of course, otherwise why fiddle?
Maybe if the communists didn’t treat their wild animals only slightly worse than their citizens…..
Ain’t been commies for years.
They’re like a big North Korea, both with chubby supreme leaders for life and peasants fed on propaganda.
It’s quite bloody stupid that they’ve called off the Piha QS seeing as most of the competitors and half the crew are already there ready to start in three days.
It’s a one road in, one road out place that can easily be isolated with a single roadblock…
They haven’t actually cancelled the Piha event, it’s postponed.
Too much, a roadblock quarantine at Piha.
* tu meke
The place is normally almost quarantined anyway (except for the meth-head westies from the town side of the hill bringing in supplies for the local tweakers)
never encountered tweakers…
Love the drive over, not so much the wave.
In the old days there was a guy out there who made a liquid form that was known as “jungle juice”.
As a very frequent visitor to the place from early ’80’s till about 7yrs ago I can assure you that many locals adopted the smokeable form when it became popularly available in the mid ’90’s.
A lot aren’t quite ‘all there’ anymore…(even if they’re still physically there)
Surfwise, I’m assured it still has it’s days when the sand is right, though the last 20 plus yrs of iron-sand mining further south has taken all the good heavy blacker than black heavy black sand which held itself together and made for top to bottom lefthanders on the famed bar.
when you say Heavy, blacker than black, heavy black sand, you are talking about the purple-black sand yeah?
Just for clarity…
It’s dogshit 350 days a year. But the sand is hard to clean from your feet and you can always get wet.
15 good days a year is being generous.
Yeah it was that ultra purple black iron sand.
Now it’s kinda brownish with light streaks and a few dark speckles.
All the good stuff got shipped off to build steel in China…
Yes true, though a lot of lowly sponsored foreign competitors (and Kelly) are there tuning up already and the event structures are built etc., the cost of which will have to come out of someone’s pocket or insurance. Just interesting that they called it off at such a last minute thing especially considering its permanent isolation…
Til next year.
Probably more worried about them getting home than being exposed to the virus. Borders are being shut at a rapid rate at the moment and last thing we want is Kelly and a bunch of wanna-be pros stuck here taxing our waves for the next few months…
Hahahaha true
And so it shall be, the Snapper curse will be lifted and the entire waiting period will be PUMPING>
Haven’t seen our sensei! Was he part of the Robinson & Moniz session or holed up slipping souls into dreamtime?
dunno
Been pretty good already this week
Isn’t that the day they busted Guy Fawkes for his fuck-up at the houses of parliament 4 days earlier ?
They could’ve just closed it to spectators and everyone could watch it on screen at home, or at the pub, or at school or in the toilet paper lines in the supermarket etc…
I’m more worried about my daughters at Chico St and UCSB getting severe alcohol poisoning because they don’t have to go to class!
Go Gauchos! (’89 grad)
same here, ‘89 also!, did I meet you at that one party that time?
ha ha!
UCSB kids are good kids for the most part…. not like our era.
Gaucho here! Don’t worry too much, A.S. Note Takers always came through for me when an afternoon at Deja Vu occupied my…. umm “studies”.
Chico St and UCSB, seriously? My god, man.
Exactly!
About 3500 people are killed in road accidents EVERY DAY worldwide
I wonder when they’re gonna ban cars etc ?
And all the domestic violence stats from Australia alone?:
https://www.whiteribbon.org…
Edit: am not taking the piss.
Yes, and similar to the number of children killed in NZ by their stepfather’s and close relatives…
That was uplifting CB. Yezbus
The truth is rarely pretty.
Like when Tyler got her super-duper afrobug?
Yeah well, that mysterious super-duper afrobug that no-one else caught, hhmmm