In what has become a regular, necessary and unfortunate stream of news bulletins, USA BMX announced today, the postponement of another race on the 2020 National Schedule.
The Music City Nationals, scheduled for June 5-7 in Nashville, TN has officially been postponed. It is the eighth event postponed on the 2020 schedule.
As we look down the calendar, we should soon be hearing word–one way or the other– about the Midwest Nationals in Rockford, IL (June 19-21); and the Great Salt Lake Nationals in Utah (June 26-28).
As the COVID crisis creeps on, it’s difficult to imagine how/if/when we get back to a scenario that remotely resembles the photo above (from a previous Music City Nats).
People are currently very aware of their personal spacing, and surroundings. I exhaled loudly in line, waiting to get in to our local Trader Joe’s the other day (with a mask on), and two people in front of me turned around and glared at me like I just spritzed them with COVID cologne.
By definition, National races bring families from all over the country to a central place. It will be interesting to see how communities recover from this crisis…will they welcome as many tourism dollars as possible to their communities? Or will they maintain a COVID-cooldown to outsiders coming in for a while.
Personally, I think the first few races back will look different from those we remember, just a few months ago.
Some have said they will stay home if extreme physical distancing is applied (such as pitting in the car, “block” racing to reduce crowd size at the track at any given time, and no congregating on the fenceline)…while others say “just let us race” and would presumably accept those measures as a (hopefully temporary) sign of the times.
As news breaks on future races, BMX News will be here to deliver the story, so stay with us!
—Mike
