The Pitch Invader—COVID-19 Canceled the Game: What Can Science Do for Us, and What Can the Pandemic Do for Science?

Abstract

This was supposed to be a great year for athletes, coaches, sports scientists, and fans.The 4-year Olympic cycle was completing its final stages, and the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games were on the horizon.UEFA Euro 2020 should have taken us through 12 countries to determine the new European soccer champion in mid-July.Before that, we were supposed to enjoy numerous sporting events across the globe yielding new champions in different sports and competition levels.And then, COVID-19 hit.On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared a pandemic caused by novel coronavirus (COVID-19), triggering unprecedented postponement/cancellation of sporting events around the globe, including the summer Olympic Games.Just as in the final minutes of a game a naked "streaker," a "pitch invader," runs across the field with security personnel in pursuit, causing the game to be disrupted and bringing frustration and misery to our faces, COVID-19 brought sport, and much more in daily human life, to a halt.Although sporting events have been canceled in the past due to wars and disease outbreaks, this is the first time that the magnitude of its impact has been so large.The 1916 Olympics was canceled due to the outbreak of World War I, but fortunately, the pandemic influenza of 1918-1919 was largely resolved prior to the Antwerp Olympiad of 1920.The 1940 and 1944 Olympics (and other major sporting championships) were disrupted by World War II.However, despite continuing social disruptions, certainly including rampant diseases, the London 1948 Olympiad was successfully contested.Due to foot-and-mouth disease (2001), the Six Nations Championships in rugby was postponed, and in 2003, the SARS outbreak caused the FIFA Women's World Cup to be relocated from China to the United States.The Ebola virus epidemic in 2014 and 2015 caused numerous sporting events in Africa to be canceled and/or relocated, while Zika virus appeared as a major threat to the Rio 2016 Olympiad.However, no pandemic so far has caused such massive and widespread cancelations of sporting events globally as COVID-19.The spread of the virus was extremely fast and reached pandemic status shortly after the first case (circa late November to December 2019) had been detected in Wuhan, China.Most of the affected countries were prompt in implementing public health measures to "flatten the curve" (reducing the early rate of infections and thus preventing medical intensive-care units from being overwhelmed with acutely ill patients).These restrictive measures affected the world of sports very hard, as "social distancing" is basically the primary option for disease mitigation when there are no effective medical therapies or vaccines.For the world of sport, the social protocols instituted in response to the COVID-19 epidemic present several problems.These include loss of revenue, disruption of athletic careers, and the inability to train and practice normally.Can sport science provide answers that will help us understand, and perhaps minimize, the impact of COVID-19?For the past 50 years or so, sport science has been able to contribute to competitive sport, even though sometimes we feel like practice and science are worlds apart. 1 However,

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