Editing A Month That Changed Sport Forever

Looking back now, those last few innocent days in the Cotswolds seem extraordinary — faintly comical you might even say, were it not for the gravity of all that followed.<br>The  provided a dozen or so hand sanitizer stations beneath jocular signs proclaiming: ‘Don't pass it on' but the notion of social distancing was alien and frankly impossible.<br>The trains into Cheltenham Spa station were heaving as always, full of complete strangers sharing bottles of Sauvignon.<br>       Cheltenham Festival organisers have defended their decision to go ahead with the meeting <br>         There were hand sanitizer stations at Cheltenham but certainly no social distance measures<br>   RELATED ARTICLES                <br><br><br><br>Share this article<br>Share<br><br><br><br>Herds of 20 journalists crammed around every winning jockey and, two hours or so after a Boris Johnson 4.30pm TV interview on pre-Gold Cup day urged us to stand apart, a heaving throng of thousands headed out for the car parks.<br> <br> ‘Crammed together like sardines, shoulder-to-shoulder, breath-to-breath, taking five minutes to shuffle 100 yards.<br><br>Not nice,' as the racing writer Jon Freeman recalled on Friday, in an account of how he contracted Covid-19 there.<br>It is precisely a month on Saturday since elite football's light was extinguished, too, with the visit to Liverpool of Atletico Madrid and their 3,000 fans, something which also seems beyond comprehension now.<br>Madrid had already become a centre for the virus by that night.<br><br>La Liga had ruled that very day that all matches must be played behind closed doors.<br>It took something within the influence of our domestic sporting obsession for the penny to drop — the news, dominating the newspapers selling well on that sunny day of racing, that Mikel Arteta and Callum Hudson-Odoi had contracted the virus.<br>Arsenal's match at Brighton was postponed and so sport began its drawing down of blinds — the Premier League, the remaining Six Nations, Euro 2020, the Australian Grand Prix and — reluctantly because the Japanese were consumed by national shame, or haji — the Olympics.<br><br>Wimbledon and the Open inevitably followed.<br>We will probably not be seeing the brave new dawn of cricket's Hundred until 2021. A once-in-a-generation summer, all gone.<br>There was a reminder in the contractual house of cards which simultaneously collapsed of how vastly over-dependent sport's business model is on TV deals.<br>Only the IOC and Wimbledon seemed to have ticked the ‘pandemic' box on their event cancellation insurance policies. Everyone else has spent the last month calculating how to minimise their losses to some extent.<br>But the lights going out was a reminder, too, of a kind of spirituality in sport about which, among the vast range of channels and options and clips on offer, we had started to become complacent.<br>The craving for sport saw the virtual Grand National attract an audience of nearly five million people on ITV.<br><br>The Belarus Premier Division, a bizarre last bastion of football, attracted 10 new broadcast deals.<br>         Hudson-Odoi was one of the first high-profile figures in the Premier League to test positive<br>         All football in England has now been shutdown due to the coronavirus pandemic<br>One Direction's Liam Payne and golfer Ian Poulter competed in a Virtual Bahrain GP, one of a series of F1 races screened live on Sky Sports which drew 3.2m viewers online and 1.2m on TV.<br>In the social media space, someone began a chainmail naming ‘four footballers who have meant most to me'.<br><br>It rocketed around for a week or so, cluttering up timelines, briefly fulfilling a purpose.<br>If symbols are really needed of what the world is missing then a ghostly image on Friday of a sunlit, deserted Augusta National Club provided it.<br>The Masters is the clarion call of spring, renewal, the first rites of the sporting summer.<br>Day will follow night, of course. This will be temporary. But the prospect of glory when sport does re-emerge will have receded for some.<br>An elusive and historic 24th tennis Grand Slam, equalling Margaret Court's record, had always seemed achievable for Serena Williams, although the chance is now fainter.<br><br>She is 39 in September. Roger Federer can use the spring to recover from knee surgery but he will be 40 when his next shot at Wimbledon comes around.<br>The momentum which has seen Rory McIlroy rise again is lost. He must wait six months for a major.<br>       Katarina Johnson-Thompson's hopes of Olympic gold decrease.<br><br>Nafissatou Thiam's recovery from the elbow injury which has been taking 10m off her javelin throw would not have been complete by this summer. It will be by the next one, when the Belgian will probably be the heptathlon event's favourite. There is hope for the younger ones, of course, not least Gareth Southgate's fledgling England football side competing a year later at the European Championship.<br>But what these tournaments will look like remains to be seen. It has been estimated that the Olympics re-scheduling will cost an additional £2billion and for all the Japanese determination to put on a show, a vast outlay like that in a world still staggering through the virus aftermath would feel terribly misjudged.<br>It has been wisely suggested that London's Austerity Games of 1948 — no new venues built, the Olympic torch coming down the Thames in a rowing boat — is a far more appropriate model.<br>Qatar has already blown the entire annual GDP of a small European country on its 2022 World Cup — an event which US prosecutors this week said the Gulf state won by bribing FIFA officials.<br><br>Qatar's estimated £3.5bn outlay — an effort to convince the world of its power — seems even crasser now.<br>         There were concerns over the spread of coronavirus when Liverpool faced Atletico Madrid<br>The bribes will have been immaterial.<br><br>We have been reminded that investment of money in medical science matters infinitely more.<br>There will surely be re-calibration for the better now, in a world which will feel smaller, economically and spatially. The F1 roadshow — transporting a cast of thousands to any place that will pay for it — may be over.<br>The carbon neutral status that F1 has promised might actually materialise. With the financial damage with us for years, a deflationary effect within football may also rescue that sport from the realms of the grotesque.<br>The pay which had somehow become normalised — Alexis Sanchez's £391,000 a week, Mino Raiola's £41.39m cut for getting Paul Pogba to Manchester United — is perhaps gone.<br>The qualities which once counted for something in football — spotting local talent, nurturing it — may consequently count for more.<br><br>There was a reason why neutrals began to love Chelsea when, prevented from buying by a UEFA transfer ban, they suddenly gave chances to Mason Mount, Tammy Abraham and  [https://musescore.com/user/50164151 يلاشوت] Billy Gilmour.<br>         Jack Grealish crashed his car having spent night partying hours after telling people to stay in<br>       The Premier League might actually become a more likeable place.The relationship between the division and its players might never quite recover, however.<br>The altruism of individuals like Jordan Henderson and Harry Maguire, leading a mission to channel a slice of players' salaries to charity, has been welcome.<br>But those players' clubs will ask why, having paid them £60,000 a week on average, they were so reluctant to take a pay cut to help in a time of catastrophe.<br>The players will point to the Professional Footballers' Association, whose need of progressive, engaging, intelligent leadership looks more necessary than ever.<br>Those players would be wise to press Gary Neville, who fulfils all three criteria, to seek the chief executive's post at the first available opportunity.<br>Football's grubby rows over pay have a distance to run before that, although nothing should obscure those in sport who have inspired through their actions these past four weeks.<br>         Jos Buttler's World Cup final shirt sold for over £65,000 and was donated to the NHS<br>         Premier League captains have also created a charitable fund to aid the war on coronavirus<br>For every Jack Grealish and Kyle Walker, there has been a Jos Buttler, raising £65,000 by the auction of his cricket World Cup final shirt, or a Jo Pavey leading thousands in streamed fitness sessions this weekend.<br><br>A Southgate, quietly surrendering much of his FA salary.<br>Sport will need what society needs when it has cleared this hill. Empathy, generosity, compromise, kindness. An understanding that we all stand to lose in one way or another. Contractual arrangements will be reneged on, of course.<br>But let there be a moratorium on any legal claim lodged within sport. Let those who seek to bring such — agents, sponsors, competitors — be assigned the pariah status they deserve.<br>It is a measure of sport's universal value that the Government is so desperate to see it emerge, blinking, back into the light.<br><br>By July, the games we have lost may play out behind closed doors. And some day a little later, perhaps in early autumn, sport as we know it will be restored. When that moment arrives, we will savour it. We will see every kick, stroke, lap or try as a precious, soaring re-affirmation of the world we lost a month ago.<br>   RELATED ARTICLES                <br><br><br><br>Share this article<br>Share