In the past few months, the ISU decided and maintained the decision to hold the 2021 Figure Skating World Championships in Stockholm, Sweden, rather than cancelling the event. In preparation, the ISU prepared rules for a "Competition Bubble" consisting of various levels of participants and regulations for these participants in order to prevent a COVID outbreak. However, many within the skating community have voiced concerns over these protocols and concerns for the health and safety of both the athletes and other workers at the event, which will take place between March 20th and March 28th. Here's why these championships should have been cancelled:
#3: The results will not correctly indicate Olympic considerations as they are intended to!
Part of the reason why there has been so much stress and pressure to hold this year's World Championships is because, typically, Worlds prior to an Olympic season are used to determine the number of spots countries will receive in each discipline at the games. The Olympics are scheduled to take place in February 2022 in Beijing. The number of spots each country receives for their athletes to go to the Olympics in each discipline is determined by how high their athletes place at this competition. But this year, that seems...silly. For example, Papadakis/Cizeron (the best Ice Dance team in the world) announced earlier this season that they did not plan to compete. Both had had COVID in the spring/summer and suffered lasting health problems, and saw no reason why they should rush to prepare for this season rather than resting for the Olympic season. But now, with these championships not being cancelled, France is having to send 3 lesser teams, and potentially lose an Ice Dance spot, because these teams together are not likely to place high enough collectively to maintain all 3. The ISU has already announced, although not in great detail, that there will be other opportunities early in the fall for spots at the Olympics to change. But this begs the question....if you're going to have to sort some things out in the fall, why are you worrying about these spots in the spring when it poses such a health risk?
#2: Not factoring in the Olympics, these results will just be unfair and irrelevant!
It's common knowledge that this skating season has been incredibly unfair to many athletes. Their abilities to train and compete depended completely on their citizenship, their country of residence, and the country in which they train. For example, Russia decided that rather than curbing events and training, they were going to INCREASE skating activity. This resulted in the majority of high-level Russian skaters getting COVID, many of whom had lasting health issues that continue to this day and have drastically affected their performances and ability to compete in events. Conversely, Canadian skaters have had a SHIT year. Canada took COVID more seriously than many other countries...which turned out very poorly for Canadian skaters. Many of them had no place to train for months, both in the spring/summer of 2020, and the winter of 2020/2021 when many rinks closed again due to rising case numbers. Not only did they not train, Canada only had a hand full of qualifying events, and didn't even host a National competition. Their federation hand-picked their world team, which shut out deserving skaters who could have come out ahead with a world championship spot if Canada had actually had Nationals (no hate to Keegan Messing, but Roman Sadovsky should have been Canada's choice here). Not to mention skaters like Evgenia Medvedeva or Rika Kihira, who were forced into unexpected coaching changes because they couldn't travel between their main coaches' countries and their countries of residence. So the results of this entire World Championship competition are WILDLY biased in favor of skaters from countries who didn't take this pandemic seriously and gave their athletes chances (however unsafe) to regularly compete their programs and gain momentum throughout the season.
#1: COVID IS A DEADLY DISEASE!
The number one reason that the ISU should have cancelled the World Championships is because WE ARE STILL IN THE MIDDLE OF A WORLDWIDE PANDEMIC! Thousands of people in the United States and around the globe are dying EVERY DAY and even those who don't die can end up with serious, serious health consequences, consequences for which we don't know the full extent. And the ISU is expecting hundreds of skaters and their coaches to get on crowded flights and travel to Sweden, a country that is currently experiencing an upward trend in cases. The ISU has supposedly formed a bubble to protect both athletes and staff, but this bubble does not even follow the basic rules that we know about the timeline of this disease. Skaters are not scheduled to arrive in Stockholm until March 2oth, and will then enter the bubble and undergo regular testing prior to interactions and throughout the games. But it can take days for someone with COVID to test positive. Not to mention the fact that if someone does test positive, they have now risked the lives of every person they've come into contact to on the planes, in the airports, and at the competition itself. And if you question the consequences of the skaters catching the disease, just ask the Russians. I know I said above that these championships are biased towards Russians who have been competing all season, but many of these skaters are not yet back in full shape and have struggled immensely to regain their endurance. It's rumored that Anna Shcherbakova still struggles with fevers after contracting COVID in NOVEMBER! And if skaters get COVID at this point in 2021, that could have real consequences on their preparation going into an Olympic season.
Having these World Championships is an extremely dangerous choice on the part of the ISU. My heart goes out to all skaters, coaches, and staff who are risking their health in preservation of their careers this week.
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