INDIANAPOLIS — USA Track and Field has rescheduled its Olympic trials for June 18-27, 2021, at Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon.
The national governing body for track announced the new dates Tuesday in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic postponing the Tokyo Olympics to 2021.
USATF worked with the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee and TrackTown USA to secure the new dates for trials originally scheduled for this June.
The competition schedule remains the same, but the timing windows could be tweaked.
The trials will be held in a remodeled Hayward Field at the University of Oregon.
The USATF announced last week it has laid off seven people from its 65-person staff and that CEO Max Siegel would take a 20% pay cut to offset lost revenue due to the coronavirus outbreak.
The organization that runs the country’s largest summer sport has been forced to cancel dozens of events, including the Olympic trials. In 2016, trials produced around $5 million in revenue.
THE U.S. OLYMPICS and Paralympic Committee is bracing for cuts of 10% to 20% because of the coronavirus pandemic that has pushed the Olympics back one year and triggered losses across the nation’s sports organizations, The Associated Press has learned.
The AP received a copy of a letter CEO Sarah Hirshland sent to leaders across the U.S. Olympic world Tuesday in which she said the exact nature of the cuts would be determined by the end of May.
“Rather than attempting a simple across-the-board reduction, we will make strategic decisions based on the resources needed to continue mission-critical programs, services and functions,” Hirshland wrote.
She said she has taken a 20% pay cut and the rest of the executive team has taken 10 percent pay cuts through at least the end of the year.
She said the reductions are needed to “balance both the current deals in revenue and anticipated decline in revenue that we expect over the next several years.”
BOB LAZIER, the 1981 CART rookie of the year and father of 1996 Indianapolis 500 winner Buddy Lazier, died Saturday from COVID-19. He was 81.
Lazier’s wife, Diane, confirmed the death in an interview with the Vail (Colorado) Daily, telling the newspaper her husband had spent 22 days in a hospital in Lakewood, Colorado, fighting the illness. They had been married for 58 years.
Lazier spent only full-time season on the CART circuit. He finished ninth in the standings that season, was the series top rookie and qualified 13th in his only Indianapolis 500 start. An engine failure forced Lazier to drop out of the race after 154 laps, dropping him to 19th.
UEFA SOFTENED its tone Tuesday toward organizers of national leagues and cups who want to end seasons early before completing all games.
With no clear end in sight for European soccer’s shutdown during the coronavirus pandemic, Belgium was the first top-tier league this month to say it wanted to declare its current standings final.
That prompted a quick response from UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin, who warned that countries risked losing Champions League and Europa League entries if they took premature decisions.
After hosting talks with 55 member federations Tuesday, UEFA’s directive was toned down to “a strong recommendation“ to try to complete domestic seasons.
UEFA’s new stance is that “some special cases will be heard.”
THE MEN’S AND WOMEN’S professional tennis tours say they will administer a player relief fund to help those in the sport dealing with the financial effects of the coronavirus pandemic.
The ATP and WTA say they are in discussions with the International Tennis Federation and the four Grand Slam tournaments but did not provide any specifics about how much money they are pooling or how it will be distributed.
They said they “look forward to finalizing and sharing the further details of a plan in due course.”
Pro tennis has been on hold since early March because of the COVID-19 outbreak, and no tournaments will be played before mid-July at the earliest.
The French Open postponed its start from May to September, and Wimbledon was canceled for the first time in 75 years.
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