This is a post on Wimbledon chaos !!
For Tennis lovers, it is the top-most event – the 2021 Wimbledon Championships is scheduled to take place at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club in Wimbledon, London, United Kingdom. Novak Djokovic and Simona Halep are the defending singles champions from when the tournament was last held in 2019.
Following the cancellation of the 2020 tournament due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the main tournament is due to begin on Monday 28 June 2021 and finish on Sunday 11 July 2021. Wimbledon 2021 will be the 134th edition, the 127th staging of the Ladies' Singles Championship event, the 53rd in the Open Era and the third Grand Slam tournament of the year. The tournament is organised by the All England Lawn Tennis Club and International Tennis Federation.
It consists of men's (singles and doubles), women's (singles and doubles), mixed doubles, boys (under 18 – singles and doubles) and girls (under 18 – singles and doubles), which will be also a part of the Grade A category of tournaments for under 18, and singles & doubles events for men's and women's wheelchair tennis players as part of the Uniqlo Tour under the Grand Slam category, also hosting singles and doubles events for wheelchair quad tennis for the first time.
The tournament will be played only on grass courts; main draw matches will be played at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, Wimbledon. Qualifying matches will be played, from Monday 21 June to Thursday 24 June 2021, at the Bank of England Sports Ground, Roehampton.
Former champions Venus Williams and Andy Murray were named in Wimbledon's initial list of wildcards for the Grand Slam. American Williams, who will turn 41 on Thursday, has won five out of her seven Grand Slam singles titles at Wimbledon but has slipped to 103rd in the women's world rankings. She has not made it past the opening round at any tournament since reaching the second round of the Australian Open in February. Britain’s Murray won Wimbledon titles in 2013 and 2016 but is currently ranked 124th having endured a spate of injuries in the past few years. Murray underwent hip resurfacing surgery in January 2019 and his comeback has also been complicated by niggling injuries which have limited his participation in tournaments.
Prize money for this year's Wimbledon will be a little over 35 million pounds ($49.4 million), a 5.2% reduction from 2019 when the grasscourt Grand Slam was last held, organisers said.
Tennis great and 20-time Grand Slam champion Rafael Nadal said today that he will be pulling out of Tokyo Games and Wimbledon 2021 in a bid to focus on taking care of his body and prolonging his career. Nadal has won Wimbledon twice in 2008 and 2010 and won the Olympic gold in men's singles tennis in 2008. Rafael Nadal, who was beaten by eventual champion Novak Djokovic at Roland Garros recently at Roland Garros was worried that the short time between French and Wimbledon, doesn't allow him enough time to recover. Nadal maintained that Olympic Games will always be special to him and that he had the honor of representing Spain in 3 Olympics. It’s never an easy decision to take but after listening to my body and discuss it with my team I understand that it is the right decision," Nadal said. "The goal is to prolong my career and continue to do what makes me happy, that is to compete at the highest level and keep fighting for those professional and personal goals at the maximum level of competition," he added.
Tennis fans have been left frustrated by enormous queues to purchase tickets for this year's Wimbledon after over 170,000 were put on sale at the same time. There was chaos just after 1pm on Thursday when hundreds of thousands of people logged on to try and secure tickets in the first online sale. It led to virtual queues for the show courts so big most people had absolutely no chance of securing any tickets, which sold out in about 40 minutes.
Many were complaining that they hadn't been emailed their access code after pre-registering for the sale on the 'myWimbledon' website. Others didn't get theirs until well after the 1pm opening of the sale. Everyone hoping to secure tickets for the reduced capacity Grand Slam, which runs from June 28 until July 11, had to pre-register before midnight last night. Tennis fans were left fuming after technical issues on the Wimbledon ticketing website saw them miss out - many took to Twitter to complain about having little to no chance of securing tickets in the sale .. .. one person posted: 'I literally clicked on Ticket Sale button the SECOND it became active… and yet there's 10,000 people ahead of me in the virtual queue. Others demanded an explanation from Ticketmaster and Wimbledon organisers as to why their code hadn't arrived in time.
The historic sporting event, which was cancelled because of the Covid-19 pandemic last year, usually distributes tickets via a ballot several months in advance. But uncertainty over coronavirus restrictions at this year's Wimbledon led to an online sale being held through the Ticketmaster platform. There will be a second opportunity to buy tickets next week.A statement issued to MailOnline by Wimbledon read: 'As expected, we received enormous demand for this initial sale of tickets for The Championships 2021. 'We appreciate the disappointment of those who were not able to get tickets on this occasion, but there will be additional opportunities to purchase tickets for this year's Championships.
The tournament will initially be played in front of 50 per cent of capacity crowds and this will rise as the fortnight progresses. The men's and women's singles finals on the 15,000-capacity Centre Court will be played before full capacity crowds with the events treated as a pilot event. This makes them exempt from the strict capacity limits that have been placed on sporting events by the Government to make them Covid-19 safe and will occur despite 'Freedom Day' being pushed back to July 19.
Everyone attending Wimbledon will need to provide certification of a recent negative Covid test to gain entry or proof of being double vaccinated. Once inside, however, they will be free to roam the grounds as is usually the case. The Wimbledon Queue, another way to gain access to the grounds, will be absent this year.
It is simply a technical glitch that created chaos and prevented fans from buying ticket .. simple !.. .. but imagine, what the British media especially BBC would have written if the same technical glitch had occurred in India say for a Cricket test at Chepauk.Double standards, thy name !!
With regards – S. Sampathkumar17th June 2021.
