Australian Open – should catastrophe put a halt to sport?
The Australian tennis championships, the first of the year’s Grand Slam tournaments, seem likely to begin in a mood of uncertainty, even apprehension. This is something that sports bodies will probably have to get used to as a result of climate change and its effects. Whether climate change contributed to the strength of the typhoon that came close to disrupting the Rugby World Cup in Japan may be questionable. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to regard it as a warning and perhaps as a foretaste of what’s to come.
The Melbourne governing body and tournament organisers first have a duty to the athletes. This is obvious. The qualifying tournament and other preliminary events in Australia have already seen players suffering from extreme heat and breathing difficulties. The former has already been experienced in Melbourne in recent Australian Opens. The latter is, I think, the direct consequence of the bushfires which have ravaged so much of New South Wales and Victoria in recent weeks. Depending on how things go over this next fortnight, consideration may have to be given to shifting the Australian Open a few weeks away from what is high summer there, no matter how such a rearrangement disturbs the tennis calendar.
The men’s game is particularly at risk because matches are played over five sets, and the modern style of play with very long rallies and few playing the serve and volley game which shortens points means that a five-set match may last four or five hours. With soaring temperatures and poor air quality, it would not be surprising to see players collapsing and even requiring hospital treatment. Certainly it will be surprising if an unusual number of matches aren’t ended prematurely by a concession when a player, already well behind, finds himself exhausted and in physical difficulties. This would be unfortunate and would, in normal circumstances, be against the spirit of the game. But it seems possible that circumstances will be far from normal.
The Melbourne tournament points to an immediate danger. Other events and other sports will surely, unless the climate scientists have got it very wrong, which current evidence suggests is unlikely, find themselves confronted by similar problems. FIFA’s decision to hold football’s World Cup in Dubai always looked unwise. It looks even more unwise now. I would guess that when the location of future Olympic Games, World Cups and similar international events is under consideration, the danger of extreme weather will have to be taken into account as scarcely ever before.
The other question, which, probably rightly, hasn’t apparently been raised in Australia, is about the propriety, rather than the danger, of staging big sporting events when a city or country is suffering some natural disaster. Precedents suggest that it is right to do so. This was the view taken during the 1939-45 war. Here in the UK the regular football leagues and the county cricket championship were abandoned for the duration. But there were lots of matches with professional players now in the armed services guesting for clubs near to wherever they were stationed. Several unofficial football and rugby internationals were played with whatever scratch teams might be assembled. Professional boxing also continued with servicemen being granted leave to prepare for championship fights. Wimbledon and the Open Golf Championship were abandoned for the duration of the war, but horse-racing continued, though the Derby was transferred from Epsom to Newmarket; greyhound-racing was also popular throughout the war.
More surprisingly perhaps, sport continued in war-ravaged Europe. In France the Vichy government encouraged amateur sport, the great tennis champion Jean Borotra being appointed Vichy’s first Minister for Sport. Rugby League, being professional was frowned on, but amateur Rugby Union was encouraged and the play-off final of the national league was held first in Bordeaux in what was called the Free Zone, later in Occupied Paris.
Horse-racing continued. The Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, abandoned in 1940, was revived the next year, two of the wartime Arcs being run at Le Tremblay rather than Longchamp. It’s natural that sport was popular and encouraged in Germany in the years of victory, extraordinary that football matches were still being played in the last months of the war. Ian Kershaw in The End, his masterly account of the last months of the Nazi regime, writes that “the last game of the war took place as late as 23 April 1945 when FC Bayern Munich beat their local rivals TSV 1860 Munich 3-2.” Unfortunately he doesn’t say how big a crowd watched it. There had been 70,000 spectators however at the last wartime German Cup Final in Berlin in June 1944.
There are good reasons why governments have permitted, even encouraged sports events in wartime and why they will do so in the face of whatever disruption to normal life may result from the extreme weather made likely by climate change. The first is that sport is good for morale. It offers a welcome distraction from anxieties and grim realities. Of course questions of propriety and public safety have arisen in wartime and will surely be raised whenever there is a natural disaster. But the old theatrical adage – “the show must go on” – applies to sport as to other forms of entertainment.
Second, professional sport is now business and, in its upper reaches, big business, business moreover on which other businesses depend for their turnover and profitability. It is an important part of the national economy.
Nevertheless what has been happening in Australia in recent weeks serves as a warning. Sport doesn’t exist in a bubble of its own. It is going to be affected by the extreme weather which climate change seems to be bringing. At the best, effects will be merely local and of short duration. At worst they will be very disruptive. Sporting bodies should be ready to plan accordingly and to consider both the timing and location of tournaments and matches. In comparison with the likely influence of climate change on other areas of life, its significance for sport may be minor. It will be real enough however, and provoke questions. For instance, the day may come – may not even be far distant – when the propriety of flying tens of thousands of fans across the world for international matches and tournaments is first called in question, then sharply criticized, then even banned. This would be sad. It’s not unthinkable.