‘Project Petrify’ could bring elite sport to its knees

So much for Project Restart, then. So much for those airy assurances that sport’s revival is the surest path to lifting the national mood. At a time when sports all across Europe are emerging from enforced hibernation, the Government is to impose a UK quarantine system so draconian that it could bring elite competition in this country to its knees.

As Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, confirmed last night that all arrivals into the country after June 8 would have to self-isolate for 14 days, the implications for major international sport were dizzying. Two Formula One grands prix at Silverstone stood in the gravest peril, not to mention British clubs’ involvement in the rest of the European football season. At a time when sport is already struggling acutely to create bio-secure venues and to test athletes thrice weekly for Covid-19, politicians have now saddled it with a thick extra layer of cost, bureaucracy and drama.

How are Manchester City supposed to complete their Champions League last-16 tie with Real Madrid? How are the three non-uk-based F1 teams meant to operate within our borders if the price is a fortnight’s quarantine? F1, to a greater extent than any of the sports affected, depends on global freedom of movement. Such is its geographical reach, even the changing of a car part usually requires an international flight.

It is a sport of perpetual movement and innovation, but one that the Government is condemning to an indefinite state of inertia.

The cost will be grievous. With seven teams based here, it supports the livelihoods of tens of thousands, while the British Grand Prix is invariably the best attended of the sporting year. But in a period when our European neighbours are firing up the engines of sport once more, the Government’s message is that economic arguments count for nought. The result? Silverstone will most likely lose its two races to Hockenheim, a venue not even listed on the original 2020 calendar. It is a national embarrassment.

Sport, if it is ever to rise from the wreckage left by coronavirus, needs clarity and direction. Instead, the Government is offering obfuscation. The Prime Minister has sided not with Project Restart but Project Petrify. While Oliver Dowden, the Culture Secretary, saw sense in sports’ arguments to be granted quarantine dispensations, the efforts ran aground as soon as they hit the door of No 10.

Project Restart, envisaged as a decisive leap forward for the country, is now mired in timorousness.

Oliver Brown