How have...
the United States
Japan
Russia
Italy
Germany
France
Austria
Hungary
New Zealand
Czech Republic
Slovakia
all managed to complete a national championship this season? Surely not all these federations are as financially destitute as the Canadian federation?
Well, that would depend on both the geography of those countries, what government regulations were in place, and what the case numbers were like. Among the countries you name, one could start by saying Russia was able to hold a nationals (and numerous other domestic events) by simply not giving a damn about YKW. New Zealand, as noted, has one of the most effective quarantines in the world; Japan's case numbers are also low in comparison with Canada and many other places. The United States held its nationals in Las Vegas both because the rink was nicely suited and because the Nevada state government allowed it. And so on.
Canada is a large country with numerous jurisdictions and (generally) fairly tough restrictions on sizeable public gatherings, in addition to many policies in place aiming (with intermittent results outside of the Atlantic provinces) to discourage internal movement.
Wilson's interview is pretty obnoxious, as with this:
“People have ingenuity. If the national championships were happening, they would go train in B.C., or go train in Saskatchewan,” Wilson said. “Coaches would help each other. We would find a way to make it feasible.”
Er, yes, David, that's in fact part of the issue. The government does not want people traveling between provinces (or long distances within provinces), and has been trying to dissuade people from doing so.
That's how the virus spreads.
Wilson says the fact that the world junior hockey championships, a 10-nation competition lasting 10 days, was allowed to be contested illustrates a disparity in the perception of the sports.
“I want to say publicly that I find it disgraceful that hockey is allowed to have their world junior championships, and we are hosting it, but we are not even allowed to have our national figure skating championships,” Wilson commented. “I find that embarrassing and disgraceful. It is such preferential treatment.
“The concept of having something like a hockey tournament, and doing it safely, as opposed to a figure skating event where it is an individual sport, it is so much more feasible to do an event for our sport than a hockey event,” added Wilson. “All that comes down to is money. The only difference is money because there is more money behind hockey.”
Nobody was given "preferential treatment", which is a bizarre way of phrasing it when he goes on to admit that it's because the World Juniors had the money to afford the very expensive health measures the province and federal government required to hold the event -- which involved a full two-week quarantine for all athletes (and good thing, too, since a bunch of them turned out to have YKW; poor Team Germany) and a real bubble.
Skate Canada doesn't have the money to run a bubble; not even the ISU is planning a bubble for Worlds. It would effectively require hosting the skaters for a month, since after the two-week quarantine they'd need to train back up.
Skate Canada International was cancelled because Ottawa, the city where it was going to be held, would never have allowed it with the case counts rising. The national championships were supposed to be in Vancouver, at a time when the British Columbian government was very actively telling people not to come there unless absolutely necessary; it's very doubtful it would have been allowed either if Skate Canada had tried to go ahead with it.
japan-forward.com
risky to say the least.
