The BNP Paribas Open tennis tournament, set to begin this week, has been postponed after a case of coronavirus was confirmed in the Coachella Valley.
The Riverside County Public Health Department declared a public health emergency for the desert cities 110 miles east of Los Angeles, including Indian Wells where the ATP and WTA tours were to play the two-week tournament starting Wednesday.
“There is too great a risk, at this time, to the public health of the Riverside County area in holding a large gathering of this size,” Dr. David Agus, professor of medicine and biomedical engineering at the University of Southern California, said Sunday. “It is not in the public interest of fans, players and neighbouring areas for this tournament to proceed. We all have to join together to protect the community from the coronavirus outbreak.”
I’m shook
— Denis Shapovalov (@denis_shapo) March 9, 2020
The event typically draws upwards of 450,000 fans. This year’s field included Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, Serena Williams, Naomi Osaka and Coco Gauff.
Tournament director Tommy Haas said organizers are prepared to play the event on different dates and will explore options. The decision to postpone was based on the guidance of medical professionals, the Centers for Disease Control and state of California officials, tournament officials said.
Refunds for this year’s event or a credit toward next year’s tournament are being offered.
Riverside County health officials said the individual with the first case of locally acquired coronavirus is being treated at Eisenhower Health in nearby Rancho Mirage after testing positive. The person is not being identified because of confidentiality rules.
Heath officials are following up on people who may have been exposed and an investigation is underway to find out how the person contracted the disease.
It’s the second case recorded in Riverside County. A cruise ship passenger from Riverside County was diagnosed with COVID-19 recently and is recovering at a Northern California medical facility. That person hasn’t returned home since leaving the Diamond Princess ship.
“We have always known this was a possibility,” said Dr. Cameron Kaiser, Riverside County public health officer. “We have been planning for weeks and are prepared to take the necessary steps to protect the health of our local community.”
A charity event featuring Nadal set for Tuesday night at Indian Wells Tennis Garden has been cancelled, tournament spokesman Matt Van Tuinen said.
Nadal was set to be joined by defending BNP Paribas Open champion Dominic Thiem, Daniil Medvedev, Matteo Berrettini, Stan Wawrinka, Milos Raonic and American Taylor Fritz for the Eisenhower Cup, a $150,000 winner-take-all event.
Earlier in the week, officials had announced several measures to protect players, fans and staff at the tennis tournament.
Ball kids were going to have to wear gloves and not touch the towels of players on the court. Organized player and fan interaction was also going to be limited at the tournament which is informally referred to as the fifth Grand Slam because of its popularity with players and fans, many of whom come from overseas. Besides ball kids, restaurant and food supply workers were going to wear gloves as well as volunteers taking tickets at entrances. Over 250 hand sanitizing stations were set up throughout the venue.
The LPGA Tour is scheduled to play the first women’s golf major of the year, the ANA Inspiration, early next month in Rancho Mirage.”
The Olympic rings are set up at Trocadero plaza that overlooks the Eiffel Tower in Paris.Michel Euler/The Associated Press
In the middle of a record haul at the Tokyo Olympics, Canada’s women’s swim team had one letdown – the 4×200-metre freestyle relay.
Canada had taken bronze in the event at Rio 2016 and again at the 2019 world aquatics championships. The team looked good for another medal.
On the day of the final, a Chinese team that was not considered a contender surprised everyone, winning in world-record time. Canada came fourth.
A battling result, but still disappointing. It looks a little worse than that now.
Over the weekend, the New York Times reported that nearly half the Chinese swim team failed a drug test seven months before the Tokyo Games. Twenty-three swimmers tested positive for trimetazidine, or TMZ.
TMZ is a synthetic substance. You’re not going to pick it up because you’ve chosen the wrong hot-dog vendor.
China was allowed to do its own investigation into the mass positive. That probe determined the athletes had been exposed to TMZ in tainted food at a team hotel. How exactly so many of them ingested it, while others did not, wasn’t explained.
Unusually, no announcement was made about the positive tests, and no one was suspended while the investigation was under way. The World Anti-Doping Agency knew what was going on, but decided the best way to determine if China had done anything wrong was to ask China to look into it. When China gave China the all clear, WADA signed off.
One of those who tested positive was Zhang Yufei. Zhang won three medals in Tokyo, one of them as part of the 4x200m relay team.
The swimming world is now playing doping leapfrog throughout those Games. The Canadian relay team is on a long list of unlucky losers. Had China’s violations stuck, the medal table would look very different.
It would also have pushed a Games that was on the edge closer to the drop. Few in Japan were super stoked about the world dropping by en masse during what would become that country’s first mass COVID wave.
The main reason the Tokyo Games happened was that so much money had been spent, much more was still owed, and insurers were not willing to write down 10 or 15 billion.
Picking a fight with China in that precarious moment could not have seemed like a great idea. Even more precarious – the next Games, to be held six months later in Beijing.
As an event, at absolute best, Beijing 2022 was going to be a very expensive bummer (which it absolutely was). That’s the sort of party that’s easy to call off.
You don’t need to be a Reddit obsessive to see what happened here. The Chinese swim team got caught mid-purge, and the people in charge had to prioritize their response.
Priority No. 1 – the Olympic business.
Priority No. 2 – the Olympic ideals.
They picked money over fairness.
It’s easy to lash them now, so plenty of people are. The head of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency called it “a devastating stab in the back of clean athletes.”
(Is it possible to be undevastatingly stabbed in the back?)
The stickiest criticism involves Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva. She also tested positive for trace amounts of TMZ before an Olympics. She also had one of those ‘maybe the dog gave me steroids’-type excuses.
But since everybody hates Russia, Valieva did not get the benefit of an in-house probe. She was dragged upside-down and backward through the global press and stripped of her medals. There’s your fairness.
It’s fitting that WADA take a reputational beating here. That is its most useful function – to absorb stakeholder rage after another own goal has been scored by the Doping Police.
But out in the real world, no one cares. Of course the Olympics is dirty. The Olympics has spent the last half century repeatedly reminding us of that.
Between Games, the Olympics makes news only two ways – ‘Upcoming host city X is having serious second thoughts’ and ‘So-and-so cheated their way to gold.’
These stories have become so numerous that the only people registering them are the ones who make their living in an Olympics-adjacent business, like sports administration or media.
Those people are happy to complain – complaining is good for trade – but they don’t want things to change. Change is dangerous. Who knows where change will land you?
In this specific instance, real change in the form of zero tolerance could have hobbled one Olympics and gotten the next one cancelled. Then what?
You start cancelling Olympics and people learn to live without them. Sponsors find new things to sponsor. Broadcasters move on.
Better to compromise. Chinese swimmers did a little TMZ. So what? Figure skaters, tennis players, breaststrokers – everybody’s doing it nowadays. It’s like weed for the Marx and Engels crowd.
With all that in mind, here’s something you won’t often read in this space – WADA made the right call.
It’s not like it was going to go swanning into Guangdong province in early 2021, right in the teeth of the pandemic, to figure out what was what. The only way to get any sort of answers was to rely on Chinese investigators. How do you know if they’re on the up and up? You don’t. WADA had two choices – take China’s word for it, or go scorched earth right before the two most tenuously assembled Games in history.
The proof that WADA made the correct choice is that those Games happened. Maybe it would make a different call now, and that might be right, too.
As far as fairness goes, it doesn’t belong in this conversation.
If a Belgian or a Tanzanian gets caught cheating, don’t even bother asking for consideration.
An American? Probably not.
An American everyone knows? Maybe.
A lot of Americans everybody knows? Let’s talk.
This can’t be discussed because once that discussion gets going, it points toward the sort of change no current stakeholder want to think about. If someone who tests positive can negotiate their way out of it and fairness is the goal, isn’t it fairer to stop testing altogether?
Was it an alley-oop? A Hail Mary? A Jerry Rice post route? Catch and ReLeaf?
Article content
Whatever it was, it was the goal Toronto Maple Leafs fans were waiting for.
Article content
If the Leafs go on to beat the Boston Bruins and make it out of the first round for the second year in a row, fans will look back at Max Domi’s flip pass and Auston Matthews’ catch and finish as the moment it all became possible.
Matthews’ 70th goal of the season (69+1 if we’re splitting hairs) was maybe his finest.
The play: Incredible. The catch: Immaculate. The finish: Nasty. The timing: Perfect.
Social media had plenty to say about Monday’s game-winning goal, but first let’s listen to calls of the play from every corner of the playoff series:
Chris Cuthbert on Hockey Night in Canada:
Article content
Retiring voice of the Boston Bruins Jack Edwards:
Article content
Of course, nothing can compare to Joe Bowen’s call on Toronto radio. Any Leafs moment isn’t complete until fans hear what the High Priest of Holy Mackinaw said, and he didn’t disappoint:
Article content
It didn’t take long for Matthews’ game-winner to go viral across social media, with fans, media and ex-players weighing in on the incredible goal. The Leafs and Bruins resume their first round series on Wednesday in Toronto at 7 p.m.
Share this article in your social network
It was a game of big numbers at Rogers Place that featured 82 shots, 72 faceoffs, 112 hits and 11 goals. Connor McDavid scored 5 points, Zach Hyman and Evan Bouchard 4 each. Adam Henrique scored his first playoff point in 12 years. And the Edmonton Oilers won the opening game of a playoff series on their home ice for the first time in 12,409 days.
Article content
But win it they did, cruising to a 7-4 win over Los Angeles Kings to establish a 1-0 series lead in the 2024 edition of the seemingly annual opening round series between the two.
Advertisement 2
Article content
It wasn’t always pretty, but several of the goals sure were. The Oilers held the advantage in play, outshooting the Kings 45-37 with an 18-10 advantage in Grade A Shots as recorded by the Cult of Hockey (running count). 8 of those Grade A shots came on a red-hot powerplay that produced 3 goals in a combined time of 4:50.
#2 Evan Bouchard, 7. Moved the puck well for the most part and had 4 secondary assists to show for it, not to mention a tertiary that doesn’t show up on the scoresheet. But was among the defensive culprits on both LA goals that cut a 4-0 lead in half before the end of the second period. Way more good than bad on the night. Contributions to Grade A Shots (GAS): Even Strength +3/-2, Special Teams +1/-0.
#5 Cody Ceci, 6. Played a rock solid defensive game, landing 5 hits and winning the lion’s share of battles. Victimized on a couple of unlucky goals against in garbage time, and in the spotlight himself on 1 of them when his stick exploded making a routine D-to-D pass after a won neutral zone faceoff. His 19:00 at even strength led the team. GAS: ES +2/-3; ST +1/-0.
Headline News
Article content
Advertisement 3
Article content
#13 Mattias Janmark, 5. Classic Janmark game in which not a whole lot happened during his 10 minutes of action, pro or con. Tagged with an undeserved -1 on the Ceci-stick-explodes goal. GAS: +0/-0; ST 0.
#14 Mattias Ekholm, 6. Solid with a couple of shaky moments. Made a couple of lunging stops on the same dangerous sequence. His neutral zone turnover led to a Viktor Arvidsson breakaway early in the second, then he was unable to contain Adrian Kempe on the 4-2. Delivered a great stretch pass to Hyman for a breakaway chance. Led the D with 2:00 on the penalty kill. GAS: ES +4/-2; ST 0.
#18 Zach Hyman, 9. All over it from the get-go, driving hard to the net time and again. Scored a goal in each period by materializing in a dangerous spot and converting a McDavid pass from close range. Added a primary assist on Henrique’s goal. Took a goalie interference for another net drive gone wrong. Later drew a call the other way. Hit a post in a scramble. Robbed by Talbot’s best save of the game on a breakaway. Took a knock on the continuation of that play and was in pain, but returned for another shift and appeared to be OK. May have set a record for most hats on the ice for a hat trick. 9 shots on net to lead both teams. Also added 5 hits and was a central figure in the battle all night long. GAS: ES +7/-1; ST+3/-0.
Advertisement 4
Article content
#19 Adam Henrique, 7. His first playoff game in 6 years and his first playoff win in 12. Won a battle leading to the first Oilers goal, scored the second himself with a strong wrist shot from range, then earned an assist on the third. Made a great aerial deflection of Ceci’s outside shot. Took a penalty. Among those beaten on the first Kings goal. GAS: ES +4/-1; ST +1/-1.
#25 Darnell Nurse, 6. Played a solid 2-way game with 7 shot attempts, 2 blocks, and 6 hits. Won a lot of battles along the way. Pasted Kempe in the early going with a booming open-ice hit. Safe and sound behind his own blueline until the very late going, when a cross-ice pass caught his skate and found the net to make it 6-3. GAS: ES +0/-2; ST 0.
#27 Brett Kulak, 5. Low event game including no goals at either end of the sheet during his 16 minutes. GAS: ES +0/-2; ST 0.
#29 Leon Draisaitl, 8. Nearly wrecked himself on his opening shift when he took a run at a King and missed, but thankfully survived. Did his best work on the powerplay, setting up an RNH tally with a brilliant pass and scoring the winning goal himself with a brilliant shot. Also made a superb pass to RNH on an even-strength 2-on-1 that wasn’t converted. Strong defensively. Drew a penalty. Rock solid on the faceoff dot at 15/24=63%. 3 shots at one end, 2 blocks (!) at the other. GAS: ES =0/-0; ST +5/-0.
Advertisement 5
Article content
#37 Warren Foegele, 6. Mashed Drew Doughty with an excellent hit in the very early going. Played a simple, solid game. Scored the empty netter that finalized the score line, after first stealing the puck in the neutral zone.
#39 Sam Carrick, 5. Played his first career playoff game at age 32 and got the job done. His line with Holloway and Janmark lost the possession battle but held their own on the scoresheet until the late fluke. He did get tagged with a -1 on the 4-2, but his “mistake” there was to do the job hjje was sent out to do and win a d-zone faceoff. 1 shot, 2 blocks, 4 hits, and 10/18=56% on the dot. GAS: +0/-0; ST 0.
#55 Dylan Holloway, 5. Held his own in his second career playoff game. GAS: +0/-0; ST 0.
#71 Ryan McLeod, 6. Played a fine defensive game between the vets Kane and Perry. 2 takeaways, 2 blocked shots. GAS: ES +2/-0; ST 0.
#73 Vincent Desharnais, 6. Rock of Gibraltar on the blue, with 6 hits and 5 shot blocks. On the receiving end of a nasty low-bridge hit by Trevor Moore that left him in obvious pain as the second period wound down, but returned in the third to finish the job. Best of all, the Oil scored the game winner on the resultant powerplay. GAS: +0/-1; ST 0.
Advertisement 6
Article content
#74 Stu Skinner, 6. Very good in the first half of the game. Contributed the TSN Turning Point when he got a tiny piece of his pad on Viktor Arvidsson’s breakaway shot, with the Oilers subsequently scoring on the continuation. The game that could have been 2-1, was instead 3-0. The back half of the game went less well with 4 official GA and a fifth which was gloved in and correctly called back after a couple of nervous minutes. Struggled a bit with rebound control. 37 shots, 33 saves, .892 save percentage.
#90 Corey Perry, 5. Put the puck in good places, including on Kane’s stick for a couple of great chances in tight. 3 hits, 2 takeaways. GAS: ES +2/-0; ST 0.
#91 Evander Kane, 6. Was visible throughout, mostly in good ways. Fired 6 shots on net including a couple of powerful wristers. nearly squeezing one through Talbot. Did have a couple of issues suppressing outside shots from the point. Led EDM forwards with 15:45 TOI at even strength. GAS: ES +3/-1.
#93 Ryan Nugent Hopkins, 6. Set up perfectly by Draisaitl for what apepared to be a wide open net, but the puck rolled off his stick. Made up for it a few minutes later with a strong goal mouth finish of another sweet Draisaitl feed. 4 shots, 2 blocks, 2 hits, 1 takeaway, and a team-high 2:04 on the 2-for-2 penalty kill. GAS: ES +0/-0; ST +1/-0.
Advertisement 7
Article content
#97 Connor McDavid, 9. Became just the 15th player in NHL history with 5 (or more) assists in a playoff game, joining dynasty Oilers Wayne Gretzky (2x), Paul Coffey, Glenn Anderson and 10 others from other teams. 4 of them were primary assists, including all 3 of Hyman’s tallies. Twice McDavid beat defenders with brilliant spin moves before dishing. Threaded a bullet pass through Matt Roy’s skates for Hyman’s hat trick goal. 3 shots, 3 hits, and uncounted passes. GAS: ES +3/-0; ST +6/-0.
STAPLES: Big questions about Nurse-Ceci pairing
STAPLES: Hitting is way up in playoffs. Are Oilers up to it?
McCURDY: Kane, Janmark, Holloway all look good to go for Game One
McCURDY: Oilers vs. Kings anything but a foregone conclusion
STAPLES: Kane, Janmark missing from practice. What are the implications?
STAPLES: Pretty much every NHL commentator is picking Oilers over Kings
Article content
Osoyoos commuters invited to celebrate Earth Day with the Leg Day challenge – Oliver/Osoyoos News – Castanet.net
Haberman on why David Pecker testifying is ‘fundamentally different’ – CNN
The Fed's Forecasting Method Looks Increasingly Outdated as Bernanke Pitches an Alternative – Bloomberg
It's possible to rely on plant proteins without sacrificing training gains, new studies say – The Globe and Mail
Gildan replacing five directors ahead of AGM, will back two Browning West nominees – Yahoo Canada Finance
Meta Expands VR Operating System to Third-Party Hardware Makers – MacRumors
Fareed’s take: There’s been an unprecedented wave of migration to the West – CNN
Brian's Randoms from Sea Otter 2024 – Pinkbike.com
Comments