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As air quality in Melbourne drops to worst in
world, tennis players face possible delays to tournament due to health fears.
Worries over the health of players at the
Australian Open have intensified after bushfire smoke forced one player to
retire with breathing problems and another match to be abandoned, with air
quality in Melbourne dropping to the worst in the world overnight.
Winds blew smoke from the fires in east
Victoria and New South Wales into the city. The air quality in the centre was
since categorised as very poor by the Environmental Protection Authority.
The defending men’s tennis champion, Novak
Djokovic, who is also the president of the ATP Player Council, suggested that
delaying the tournament might have to be considered. “You have to consider it
because of some extreme weather or conditions,” he said on Saturday. “That’s
probably the very, very, last option. [But] if it comes down to ... the
conditions affecting the health of players, you have to consider it.”
Slovenia’s Dalila Jakupovic suffered a
coughing fit halfway through her qualifying match against Switzerland’s
Stefanie Vögele at Melbourne Park, the venue for the tournament’s first grand
slam, which forced her to retire. “I was really scared that I would collapse.
That’s why I went on to the floor because I couldn’t walk any more,” she
said. “I don’t have asthma and never had breathing problems.”
Jakupovic said the match should never have
been allowed to take place in the first place. “It’s not healthy for us. I
was surprised, I thought we would not be playing today. But we don’t have
much choice.”
At Kooyong the match with the former world No
1 Maria Sharapova against Germany’s Laura Siegemund was called off after
officials decided the smoke was creating unsafe conditions.
“I started feeling a cough coming toward the
end of the second set but I’ve been sick for a few weeks so I thought that
had something to do with it,” Sharapova told SBS after the match. “But then I
heard Laura speak to the umpire and she said she was struggling with it as
well. We were out there for over two hours, so from a health standpoint it’s
the right call from officials.”
The former Wimbledon finalist Eugenie Bouchard
also called several medical time-outs in her opening match against China’s
Xiaodi You.
The state’s chief health officer said although
air quality would improve with warmer temperatures throughout the day, the
situation remained hazardous. Vulnerable groups such as children aged under
14, over-65s, pregnant women and those with pre-existing medical conditions,
were particularly at risk.
Overnight, firefighters were called to 200
false fire alarms triggered by the smoke haze. There are still 16 fires
burning in Victoria, which have claimed four lives and destroyed 353 homes
across 1.4m hectares (3.5m acres). Fires have been burning in the state since
November, mainly caused by dry lightning from thunderstorms, some of which
were brought on by the fires themselves.
The Victorian government, which on Tuesday
announced a $2.55m inquiry into the fires, advised residents to “minimise the
time spent in smoky conditions whenever practical to do so” and to “avoid
exercise”.
This could pose problems for the Australian
Open tournament, due to start on Monday.
Tom Larner, Tennis Australia’s chief operating
officer, said: “We’re treating any suspension of play like a rain delay or a
heat delay, in that we will stop if conditions become unsafe based on medical
advice, and once those conditions are safe to play players will get back on
court.”
At last year’s Australian Open, organisers
were forced to change the rules on suspensions and breaks during extreme heat
following complaints from players in 2019.
The country’s tourism industry has also been
affected by the crisis. Tourism Australia was forced to withdraw an
advertising campaign featuring Kylie Minogue. Speaking to radio station 2GB,
the tourism minister, Simon Birmingham, said: “I have anecdotal evidence from
right across the country of cancellations, and that’s disappointing,
annoying, frustrating.”
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