It’s been predicted for a few days now, and it’s finally happened: the 2020 Isle of Man TT is cancelled, due to fears over the coronavirus outbreak.
The COVID-19 pandemic has hit the racing world hard, as health officials shut down any large-scale gatherings of people. The opening rounds of MotoGP have been affected, as well as World Superbike, Supercross, the Daytona TT and Daytona 200, the first event in the FIM Cross Country Rallies championship, FIM’s endurance racing in Europe, and more.
The UK is currently seeing the early stages of what appears to be a serious infection, and therefore the Isle of Man’s government shut down the races, even though there’s no known cases of COVID-19 on the island. With the massive influx of visitors for the May 30-June 13 event, it was all but guaranteed the disease would hit the island in force, had the event not been cancelled.
Officials said there’d be refunds for all official tickets, in due time, and that the summer’s Classic TT events are still scheduled to run as planned.
The last time the TT was cancelled was in 2001, when officials called the races off to halt the spread of foot-and-mouth disease.
