Athletics: Euro in Paris canceled, fear of a white season becomes clearer

Fear of the void: after the Tokyo Olympics, postponed to 2021, the coronavirus pandemic took on the skin of the European Athletics Championships, scheduled for August 25 to 30 in Paris and purely and simply canceled on Thursday, hovering the threat of a white season. With the Olympic Games and the Euro, these are the two main events on the athletics planet which are thus removed from the calendar, while all the major meetings have already been postponed and will not resume until early July.

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Shortly before the decision of the organizers of the European Championships, the Diamond League had indeed decided to postpone the meetings of Eugene (United States, June 7) and Paris (June 13) to a later date. In total, eight meetings of the major athletics circuit have passed by without certainty about their future, which postpones July 4 in London a possible start of the international season.

Only Oslo (June 11) was preserved behind closed doors, outside the Diamond League and in a format closer to an exhibition with in particular a distance match between the 2012 French Olympic champion Renaud Lavillenie and the Swedish Armand Duplantis, who delighted this world pole vault record (6.18 m). The two men will compete in a competition really like no other, Lavillenie struggling from the jumper ... from his garden in Pérignat-lès-Sarliève in France.

"We really tried everything"

The fate of the Euro was him pending since the containment decreed in France from March 17. The organizers have long cherished the hope of being able to maintain the event but the uncertainties linked to the deconfinement made their task impossible, the camera having been judged from the outset "unthinkable" by the French Athletics Federation (FFA). The cancellation was imposed Thursday after a meeting of the executive committee of the organizing committee, preceded by a videoconference with the FFA, the Ministries of Sport and the Interior and the interministerial delegation to major events.

"We really tried everything, we fought to the end for the maintenance, said Jean Gracia the president of the organizing committee. We have worked hard to make these European Championships and offer something interesting at the end of the season to athletes who are in a difficult situation. We all hoped that the situation could improve quickly, unfortunately this is not the case. ”

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“We even asked the Federation medical commission to assess the measures to be taken to organize the event. We have studied all the possibilities, including that of reducing the number of athletes per event or putting one spectator out of two ”at the Paris stadium Charléty, he continued. The president of the FFA André Giraud for his part indicated having "taken into account the risk assessment as it was presented by the State services".

Precautionary principle 

"The lighting of the state services was decisive in making this decision," he added. We acted with full responsibility. The interest was to preserve the health of everyone, athletes, spectators, volunteers, officials and employees. It is a precautionary principle. ”

This is a financial blow to French athletics, whose national competitions are suspended until the end of July. Just over 1.7 million tickets had already been sold (more than 50% of the total) for a budget of 17 million euros. But despite the absence of cancellation insurance, the boss of the FFA estimated "that there will be no significant financial impact on the budget of the Federation", expected to break even for 2020. "The State subsidies, ie 25% of the budget, will not be claimed and the European Federation will play its insurance, "he said.

The athletes are themselves deprived of their last major sporting goal of the season, especially since the International Athletics Federation has suspended the qualification period for the Tokyo Olympics until November 30. “It's a bit of a disappointment, sportingly speaking, it was at home, we don't often have the opportunity. It looked like the last chance to have a great event this summer, ”reacted Olympic vice-champion of the disc Mélina Robert-Michon, questioned by AFP . Sprinter Christophe Lemaitre, Olympic bronze medalist in the 200m and quadruple European champion (100, 200 and 4x100m), told AFP of his "sadness", admitting to being "more and more afraid of 'a white season'.

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