The glut of sporting cancellations caused by the coronavirus have left athletes the world over in competitive limbo - a state undesired by all bar those training for the Limbo World Championships.
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Which, incidentally, have just been cancelled.
Clearly the situation is going to get a lot worse before it gets any better, a fact apparent to anybody with a name that doesn't rhyme with Ronald Crump.
Deprived of their stages, the sporting performers have resorted to endless rehearsals in the hope that eventually the show may go on.
But when the really big guns decide to pull the pin - cricket's Indian Premier League, basketball's NBA and soccer's English Premier League - the writing is on the wall for sport's participants, fans and sponsors.
ELSEWHERE IN SPORT:
- Tasmanian athletes caught up in virus fears
- Coronavirus halts Birtwhistle's Olympic preparations
- Nurse becomes second Tasmanian to conquer English channel
- National boon for Lake Barrington
- Ultimate Kookaburra on same level as Ponting
- Cricket blazes trail for Tassie AFL, NBL teams
- AFL needs Tassie more than it realises
- AFL's Tassie silence is deafening
- Bass sporting pork needs barrelling
- Launceston the obvious host for 2023 World Cup
- Top 10: Tasmanian sporting moments 2019
And not forgetting the gambling companies. They're the real victims here.
If there is no sport, there is nothing for problem gamblers to squander their family's income on.
Fortunately, gambling companies are a fairly resourceful bunch and will doubtless find alternative wholesome unpredictable outcomes on which to wager - such as what will be the next event to feel the axe or the final death toll of corona victims.
It appears no state or sport has been spared.
Tasmania, for example, has seen upcoming national BMX and netball championships axed, its only day of international cricket this summer hit for six and imminent AFL fixtures destined for the closed-door treatment.
The snowballing saga has seen many snap decisions made - some sensible, some stupid.
For instance, the decision to play the three One-Day Internationals between Australia and New Zealand behind closed doors appeared a sane option.
However, as the first two were scheduled to be played in Sydney and the third in Hobart, once that decision had been made, common sense would surely dictate that game three should automatically be moved to Sydney.
But no. Instead, the initial plan had the players - all internationally well-travelled folk and therefore high-risk potential virus carriers - hopping on two unnecessary interstate flights thereby exposing both themselves and many fellow passengers to potential contamination purely so that nobody in a different state could see them play.
Eventually, common sense prevailed and the games were canned altogether - thereby handing the Aussies a proud series victory courtesy of their opening-match 71-run victory.
Wisecracks about Hobart cricket fixtures being unlikely to reach the 500-spectator benchmark defined by the government as the limit of allowable congregations are not conducive to maintaining a reasoned discussion and therefore should not be entertained.
Meanwhile, in addition to Tasmanian sporting events being affected, so are Tasmanian sports men and women waiting to compete in their chosen fields around the globe.
Richie Porte completed the Paris-Nice cycle race on Sunday and immediately retreated to his European base in Monaco unsure what or where his next competitive pedal may be.
Tasmania's top rowers, hockey players and track and field athletes find themselves marooned in no-man's-land, caught in the crossfire between the safety of their Australian trenches and the toxic germs wafting over from behind enemy lines. Or China as we call it.
Jake Birtwhistle summed it up best.
"Not sure what I'm training for, but I plan to be ready," the Tasmanian triathlete posted on social media next to a picture of him cycling along a deserted road in Florida.
When it comes to how the global pandemic is impacting world sport, Birtwhistle is an apt case study.
One of the most widely travelled of Tasmanian athletes, he has effectively been preparing for July's Olympics for about six years - putting aside the fact that he should have been selected for the Rio de Janeiro Games four years ago.
In the wake of the opening round of the World Triathlon Series in Abu Dhabi being postponed, Birtwhistle switched his training program from Europe to North America, ahead of the second round in Bermuda which is currently listed as "To be confirmed" on the WTS website.
Like many Olympic hopefuls, Birtwhistle needs to complete specific qualification criteria to earn selection to the Tokyo Games. Without competition, those athletes can't tick the required boxes.
An article on the cyclingnews website this week neatly summarised the predicament.
"The problem is, nearly every potential Olympic qualifying event around the world has been cancelled or is under threat of cancellation in order to help stop the coronavirus pandemic," it said.
Quite where this leaves all those Olympic hopefuls - or indeed the Olympics themselves - nobody seems to know.
Ronald Crump's soundalike in the White House has suggested delaying the Games by a year. But as most of what he says either makes no sense, has no foundation in reality or is simply the musings of a megalomaniac madman who thinks Twitter is an acceptable medium on which to conduct global diplomacy, the idea was universally allowed to pass straight through to Tim Paine.
All of which leaves virtually everyone in what Porte's team Trek-Segafredo described this week as "a period with no races and many unknowns".
Anyone for a spot of limbo?
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