Will Cheltenham Festival be cancelled due to coronavirus outbreak?
THE greatest roar in sport is just days away.
Cheltenham Festival is the pinnacle of the jump racing calendar and was attended by over 260,000 race goers last year.
But with the world currently dealing with the coronovirus outbreak, there have been question marks over this year’s Festival going ahead.
Will Cheltenham Festival be cancelled due to coronavirus?
THE world of sport has been quick to react to the outbreak, with various postponements to events around Europe.
Italy’s clash with Ireland in the Six Nations has been called off, there are numerous Serie A matches postponed and the MotoGP season opener has been shelved in Qatar.
Currently though, as of March 4, Cheltenham Festival 2020 WILL go ahead.
Racing is scheduled to begin on Tuesday, March 10 through to Friday, March 13.
So far in the UK there have been no major sporting casualties due to coronavirus and bosses are keen to stress it’s business as usual.
The government have released an action plan and despite mentioning that sporting events could be cancelled for ‘up to 12 weeks’, things are not currently at that stage.
The action plan reads: “Action that would be considered could include population distancing strategies (such as school closures, encouraging greater home working, reducing the number of large scale gatherings) to slow the spread of the disease throughout the population, whilst ensuring the country’s ability to continue to run as normally as possible.”
While a Cheltenham Racecourse spokesperson said on February 27: “All remains full speed ahead for The Festival in a fortnight’s time.
“Racing continues to liaise closely with government to stay on top of the situation and we are looking forward to four fantastic days of racing at Cheltenham.”
But writing exclusively for SunSport, tipster Matt Chapman is worried that the BHA aren’t taking the threat of the disease seriously enough – and isn’t sure when they could reschedule the Festival if forced into a late cancellation.
He wrote: “I think racing is being particularly blase about the Coronavirus.
“The BHA claims it has everything under control as far as Cheltenham in concerned, but I’m surprised everyone is being so confident all will be well for the Festival.
“If it was abandoned it’s hard to know when it could be re-scheduled, as that would surely depend on when the virus disappeared. So how can any dates be in place?
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“And with Aintree and Punchestown just around the corner there are clashes almost straight away.
“And who knows whether those meetings would be on as well.
“The simple truth is that none of us know what is going on. Let’s just hope the fact that Great Britain is a little island helps!”