Roland Garros tournament director insists French Open won’t repeat Adria Tour mistakes
Roland Garros Tournament Director Guy Forget has assured fans that the French Open won’t make the same mistakes as organisers of the controversial Adria Tour, vowing they will be “really, really cautious”.
The Adria Tour, staged in the Balkans in June to raise funds for humanitarian projects in the region, didn’t have any social distancing measures in place as Serbia had limited coronavirus cases.
However, it was cancelled midway after several players, including organiser and world No 1 Novak Djokovic, Grigor Dimitrov and Borna Coric, and some non-playing staff tested positive for the Covid-19.
Several question marks have since been raised about whether or not tennis should resume in August, but French Open organisers are pushing ahead with plans to host the red dirt Grand Slam from September 27-October 11 with up to 60% of spectators allowed inside stadiums.
Forget, though, is confident Roland Garros will learn from the ill-fated event’s mistakes.
“Maybe some people were overconfident there,” he told Reuters.
“Luckily no one got hurt really bad but even a few cases is too much and we want to avoid that as much as we can.
“We want to reassure everyone that having people getting ill will be terrible for us. Let’s be really careful, really cautious.”
While the French Open will have some fans, the US Open will be a closed-doors event with strict health and safety protocols while players’ entourage will also be reduced.
Forget says French Open organisers have a little bit more “flexibility”.
“Luckily things are a bit more flexible in Europe and in France, especially,” he said. “Hopefully, what we’re going to announce will probably be even more flexible than what we did.”
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