When the 2022 Commonwealth Games begin in Birmingham, England on July 28th, the stands will look different than they have in the past.
The reason? Australia’s organizing committee has banned athletes from going to other sporting venues to cheer for their countrymates in an effort to prevent an outbreak of COVID-19, according to a report in the Daily Mail.
The organizing committee had previously released its COVID-19 rules, but added this extra measure recently.
The reason for the new rule, as explained by chef de mission Petria Thomas, is that the seating where the athletes would go to watch would also be available to the public.
“They will be permitted to stay with their team and support their team, but there won’t be an opportunity to go and watch other events because unfortunately, those seats will be in public spectating areas, which presents a very high risk of Covid-19 transmission,” Thomas told News Corp.
Australian athletes will also be required to wear a mask at all times. The only time they don’t have to wear one is when they are exercising or walking outside, and in their rooms.
Thomas added that the recent COVID outbreak at the 2022 World Championships in Budapest, which hit eight swimmers, including Australian Lani Pallister, helped drive the committee’s decision to put this extra precaution in place.
“Our primary focus is that we can get our athletes to the starting line and that they are performance ready,” Thomas said.
The majority of the Australian World Championship contingent had not been wearing masks until Pallister’s positive test, when it then became a requirement.
The Australian swimmers have been at training camps in Spain and France in preparation for the Commonwealth Games which are now just two weeks away.
There are 32 sports being contested at the Games, including diving, swimming, and para swimming.
A total of 72 nations are participating.
The Toxic Cough….
Coming to a venue near you.
For a second I thought it said “Australia bars athletes from cheering for other countries” and was like DANG
I get it, you want your athletes to be safe and able to compete.
Absolutely. It’s flying around again, so it’s the right decision.
Yes, right call imo. It’s rife in Britain atm – I am recovering atm and know many people, probably more than at any other point in the past 2 years, who are in the same situation.
Yet they will fly on airplanes, eat at restaurants, and stay in hotels…
It just seems silly at this point to put out a single arbitrary safety protocol when everything else is “normal”.
It is happening in other sports also. If you check out the Instagram accounts of athletes traveling to the World Track and Field Championships beginning tomorrow in Eugene, mask usage is way up, both on airplanes and elsewhere. Nobody wants to work hard for years and then give up medal opportunities due to flippancy and ignorance.
Yeah, and just because some risks are unavoidable doesn’t mean that athletes should give up on minimizing risks.
I know people have lots of ‘opinions’ about COVID-19, but at the end of the day, it’s a fact that athletes are missing championships because they’re getting sick. If there are things they can do to lessen the risk of missing championships, why wouldn’t they do so?
Australia will fly charter planes over, I would suspect, and can manage the risk on those planes accordingly (with testing and masking protocols). Same with hotels and restaurants – though I think it’s likely they won’t eat in any restaurants until they’re done competing.
I might venture to guess that they wouldn’t allow them to eat out even after competing because an athlete can still be around out her who are still competing
Right, but aside from restaurants, you can do all of that stuff w/ a high-quality mask on.
I’m sure plenty of athletes aren’t teetotalers, but do you expect them to be at a club the night before they’re in a final? (Like, I bet some do! But that’s not exactly maximizing potential, much like ‘not being able to swim at all because you’ve got Covid’ sorta throws a wrench into things.)