Russia’s 2020 Snowboard Championship cancelled due to COVID-19 pandemic

MOSCOW, November 23. /TASS/. The 2020 Russian Snowboard Championship, which was scheduled for December 22-26, has been cancelled as a preventive measure against the ongoing novel coronavirus spread in the country, the press service of the Russian Snowboard Federation (RSF) announced in a statement on Monday. "We were doing our utmost to organize this tournament in line with the schedule," RSF President Denis Tikhomirov was quoted as saying by the press service. "However, the current epidemiological situation forced us to cancel this tournament." "Our current priority is to minimalize all possible risks to the health of our athletes and personnel, and we must provide for their maximum safety," Tikhomirov added. The 2020 Russian Snowboard Championship was scheduled to be hosted by two different venues. The competitions in the Parallel Slalom and the Parallel Giant Slalom were set to be held on December 22-26 in the Chelyabinsk Region’s city of Miass and the Snowboard Cross competitions were due to take place in Tashtagol, in Siberia’s Kemerovo Region. Global coronavirus crisis In late December 2019, Chinese officials informed the World Health Organization (WHO) about the outbreak of a previously unknown pneumonia in the city of Wuhan, in central China. Since then, cases of the novel coronavirus - named COVID-19 by the WHO - have been reported in every corner of the globe, including Russia. On March 11, 2020, the WHO declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic. According to the latest statistics, over 59,080,500 people have been infected worldwide and more than 1,395,300 deaths have been reported. In addition, so far, over 40,838,720 individuals have recovered from the illness across the globe. To date, 2,114,502 coronavirus cases have been confirmed in Russia, with 1,611,445 patients having recovered from the disease. Russia’s latest data indicates 36,540 fatalities nationwide. Earlier, the Russian government set up an Internet hotline to keep the public updated on the coronavirus situation. Read more