It’s an understatement to say we’ve had quite a bit of rain lately. Thoughts go out to any of our DADS v DADS lads impacted by flooding. There is also frequently over exaggerated fears of a horizon of ‘weather bombs’, ‘the polar vortex’, ‘beasts from the east’ and ‘thundersnow’ being thrown at us regularly (otherwise previously known as winter 😁). Which means events get prematurely cancelled as a precaution, only to find out the reality was no where near like the press and weather warnings had made out.
While a lot of weekend amateur sport has been postponed professional sport largely is able to carry on nowadays from things like improved drainage and under soil heating, but in the past there have been major famous events that have also come second place to mother nature.
New York Marathon 2012 Since 1970 the New York marathon has never been cancelled. Even after the 2001 terrorist attacks, the race went ahead as planned. However hurricane Sandy was enough to cancel the event in 2012 when the city was too damaged by the storm to host the event.
Le tour De France 2019 You wouldn’t have thought that a cycling competition held in the height of summer would have to have a stage cancelled because of snow. But this is exactly what happened when a freak snow shower hit the Alps halting the race.
Snow Bowl 2017 A National Football League game played on December 2017, between the Indianapolis Colts and Buffalo Bills at Highmark Stadium, New York. 9 inches of snow fell during the game alone, but play continued with the The Bills winning the game in overtime.
When snow stopped cricket play. It’s normal for rain and bad light to stop play but on 2 June 1975, snow an inch thick covered the pitch at Buxton in a match between Derbyshire and Lancashire, and also stopped play at several other county cricket matches around the country. However this was followed by a long hot summer and barely another day of cricket was lost all season.
Champions League Final 2008 For the first time in history, two clubs from the same country met in the final of the Champions League in Moscow. Although on paper this would be a spectators dream with the likes of Ronaldo, Drogba and Rooney all on the same pitch, a huge downpour slowed the match right down. It was in the penalty shootout however that the rain took full centre stage. John Terry could have won it for Chelsea but slipped on the soaking pitch and Utd went onto lift the trophy.
Hopefully, no desert heatwaves or freakish snowstorms this winter to disrupt our games nights and whats a bit of rain right, KEEP PLAYING throughout the winter and KEEP OTHERS PLAYING TOO. It’s a long time to be hibernating otherwise.
