Four Continents skating competition latest to hit COVID cancellation list
ISU season scheduled to begin Oct. 23 with Skate America in Las Vegas
The Four Continents Championships in figure skating scheduled for February in Australia has been cancelled by the International Skating Union because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The 2023 Four Continents will be staged in Sydney instead.
"Considering the pandemic developments and related impact on the organizers and participants of ISU events, the ISU Council decided to cancel," the governing body for the sport said in a statement Friday.
On Tuesday Skate Canada in Ottawa was also cancelled, joining the Grand Prix Final in Beijing on the cancellation list of a season that is scheduled to start on Oct. 23 with Skate America in Las Vegas, though fans will not be permitted to watch live. The other five Grand Prix series events are on, but only skaters from the host nation or those training in that country are able to compete. Those events are in Russia, France, China and Japan.
The ISU awarded the 2022 Four Continents to Tianjin, China, but did not set a date for them. The Winter Olympics are scheduled for Beijing in February 2022.
Also awarded were the 2023 European Figure Skating Championships to Helsinki; the 2023 World Junior Championships to Calgary; and the worlds to Saitama, Japan.
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French figure skating Grand Prix cancelled
The Internationaux de France, another event in the Grand Prix of Figure Skating, has been cancelled.
After the French government last week enacted a curfew in the area because of the pandemic, the French federation decided on Monday the Nov. 13-15 event in Grenoble was no longer viable.
The remaining Grand Prix events — Skate America in Las Vegas this weekend, plus China, Russia and Japan — have been restricted to domestic-only figure skaters.
