Wimbledon Organizers Mulling Postponement Or Cancellation Because Of Coronavirus Concerns

Wimbledon organizers will make a decision next week about the staging of its tennis championships in June in light of the outbreak of the coronavirus and the COVID-19 disease.

“The AELTC can confirm that it is continuing a detailed evaluation of all scenarios for The Championships 2020, including postponement and cancellation, as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak,” the All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC), which organizes the famous annual grass-court championships, said in an emailed statement.

The Wimbledon Championships, which were first held in 1877, have never been canceled during peacetime. The tournament was not held from 1940 to 1945 because of World War II.

The Wimbledon Championships, where Novak Djokovic of Serbia and Simona Halep of Romania are the defending champions, is scheduled to take place June 29 through July 12 at the All England Club in southwest London. 

The U.K. currently has 8,365 confirmed coronavirus COVID-19 cases, including 436 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University. The U.K. went into a three-week lockdown on Monday in an attempt to try and stem the outbreak.

Last week, organizers of the annual clay-court major at Roland-Garros in Paris said they would move their event from the end of May to September after France went into a strict 15-day lockdown.

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Wimbledon organizers have been contingency planning since January, when the coronavirus first started to spread in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.

The main board of the AELTC will hold an emergency meeting next week, the Club said, adding it was “communicating closely” with Britain’s Lawn Tennis Association, the men’s ATP Tour, the women’s WTA Tour, the International Tennis Federation and the other three majors.

The WTA Tour has canceled all of its events until May 2 because of the virus outbreak, while the ATP Tour has suspended its circuit until April 20.

The build-up for Wimbledon, one of the biggest brands in international sports, is scheduled to begin at the end of April.

“At this time, based on the advice we have received from the public health authorities, the very short window available to us to stage The Championships due to the nature of our surface suggests that postponement is not without significant risk and difficulty,” the Club said.

Because the Championships are held on grass, a living surface, there is only a relatively short time frame available for the tournament to be played on a later date because of daylight fading from mid-August.  

Playing the event behind closed doors has been “formally ruled out,” the Club said. Wimbledon typically employs a temporary workforce of around 6,000 staff during a normal Championships.

“The unprecedented challenge presented by the COVID-19 crisis continues to affect our way of life in ways that we could not have imagined, and our thoughts are with all those affected in the UK and around the world,” said Richard Lewis, the AETC chief executive officer. “The single most important consideration is one of public health, and we are determined to act responsibly through the decisions we make,” he added.

Following recent advice by the U.K. government, the AELTC’s sites at the All England Club, Wimbledon Park Golf Club and Raynes Park have closed, with a reduced workforce, including head groundsman Neil Stubley, remaining in place to look after the grass courts and security.

The Club said it had been “working closely with the U.K. government and public health authorities to follow their advice and understand the likely impact of COVID-19 and the government’s emergency measures on The Championships, and our thoughts are with all those affected by this crisis at this time.”