‘I don’t see sport returning any time soon’ – Andy Murray calls for patience in fight against coronavirus

Michael Graham
Andy Murray at Davis Cup

Andy Murray has urged patience as the world’s governments continue to resists calls for coronavirus restrictions to be lifted to allow the return of sports.

Much of the world has been in some form of lockdown for the last two months in an attempt to contain the spread of coronavirus, but promising signs that it is coming under some form of control are starting to emerge.

That has led many to start calling for sport to be allowed to resume, but Murray believes tennis must continue to show restraint.

“I’m sure all tennis players want to get back to competing and playing as soon as possible,” Murray told the ATP.

“But right now that is not the most important thing.

“First of all, we want to get our normal lives back, just being able to go out, see friends, go to restaurants and have your normal freedoms.

“And then hopefully over time, things will start to allow for travelling and sport will be able to go back to normal as well. But I don’t see that happening very soon.”

Currently, the US Open and French Open are scheduled to go ahead in September, but Murray has warned against rushing the process of restoring sporting normality.

“The first thing is to try and find a way to stop the virus spreading and once we have done that we will be able to do more normal things that everyone does rather than thinking about competing at sport,” Murray added.

“When you don’t get to see it for a while, maybe people realise how much they love playing it, but just because it’s difficult not to have sport just now doesn’t mean we have to speed things up.

“I’m obviously no expert on this but I assume the danger is when you try to do things too quickly – like avoiding social distancing.

“If we get back to international travel, then maybe there could be a second wave of infections and that would slow everything down again and that’s not what anyone wants. Let’s just get things back to normal first.”

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