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      The Weeknd’s Super Bowl Halftime Show Breaks With Tradition

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesSee Your Local RiskVaccine InformationWuhan, One Year LaterAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Weeknd’s Super Bowl Halftime Show Breaks With TraditionThis time, the field won’t be swarming with fans crowding the stage. In fact, the stage won’t be on the field at all, but in the stands.The Weeknd in concert. He will be headlining the Super Bowl halftime show in Tampa on Sunday.Credit…Hayoung Jeon/EPA, via ShutterstockJulia Jacobs and Feb. 4, 2021, 3:09 p.m. ETWhether it stars Al Hirt, Michael Jackson or Beyoncé, the Super Bowl halftime show has always taken center stage on the field.But for the first time in the 55-year history of the game, the Weeknd, who is headlining this Sunday in Tampa, Fla., will perform on a stage set up in the stands in keeping with strict coronavirus protocols intended to limit contact with the players and coaches; his act may, however, include a brief interlude on the field.In a typical year, a massive stage is rolled onto the field and hundreds of fans pour out to surround it; this year only about 1,050 people are expected to work to put on the show, compared with 2,000 to 3,000 most years. Performers and crew members will receive Covid-19 tests before rehearsals and before the performance.When he strode to the microphone Thursday at a news conference, the Weeknd took in the room and noted, “It’s kind of empty.” His words were perhaps a preview of how the stadium might look to people watching from home. (About 25,000 fans will be in the stadium — less than half its 65,000-person capacity — joined by thousands of two-dimensional cardboard cutouts of fans provided by the N.F.L.)The Weeknd (Abel Tesfaye), is a 30-year-old Canadian pop star known for hits including “Can’t Feel My Face” and “Starboy.” His concerts often have a brooding feel and a dark, avant-garde edge. (The music video for his latest hit, “Blinding Lights,” opens with the Weeknd laughing maniacally, his face covered in blood.) He said that his halftime show would incorporate some of his trademark artistic themes but that he plans to be “respectful to the viewers at home.”“The story will continue,” he said, “but definitely we’ll keep it PG for the families.”This will be the second Super Bowl halftime show produced in part by Jay-Z and his entertainment company, Roc Nation, who were recruited by the N.F.L. in 2019. At the time, performers were refusing to work with the league, in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback who began kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality and racial injustice.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      in Tennis

      For Melburnians, the Australian Open Tests Anxieties About the Virus

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesSee Your Local RiskVaccine InformationWuhan, One Year LaterAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyFor Melburnians, the Australian Open Tests Anxieties About the VirusAustralians have gone to great lengths to control the coronavirus. And some don’t want to throw that away for a tennis tournament.A worker cleaned during a warm-up session at Melbourne Park on Thursday.Credit…David Gray/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFeb. 4, 2021, 1:02 p.m. ETMELBOURNE, Australia — From the banks of the Yarra River to the vineyards of Mornington Peninsula, the news out of muggy Melbourne Park sent shivers across the state of Victoria.A worker at one of the hotels where players and officials were quarantined ahead of the Australian Open had tested positive for the coronavirus. The announcement, made late Wednesday, carried an irksome echo for Melburnians who have endured three lockdowns, including one that lasted 111 days, to successfully subdue the coronavirus.“There’s no reason for people to panic,” Daniel Andrews, Victoria’s premier, said on Thursday. But in many circles of this city, that button had already been pressed. The first tennis major each year is the crown jewel in this country’s sporting calendar, but even before the positive result snapped the state’s 28-day streak of zero community transmission, many Australians seemed conflicted about going forward with the event.Ian Hickie, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Sydney, said that Australia shut down the country last year — at tremendous cost to the economy and people’s mental health — “so we are spared the physical health disaster of North America and Europe and South America.”To risk giving back those hard-won gains “just doesn’t make sense outside a very narrow business sector,” he said, adding, “I think it would be safe to say most people are furious that it’s gone ahead.”The letters sections of Australia’s newspapers in recent weeks have become a Greek chorus, with readers railing about the hypocrisy of welcoming international visitors while continuing to shut out Australian citizens stuck abroad and about the dissonance of preaching about public health and safety while seeming to prioritize a world showcase event.The tournament had planned to allow up to 30,000 paying fans a day on the grounds, but the positive test prompted some ticket holders to ask for refunds on Twitter. Six men’s and women’s tuneup events at Melbourne Park were suspended Thursday, with matches rescheduled for Friday. The draw for the Australian Open was also postponed by a day to Friday. Craig Tiley, the chief executive of Tennis Australia, remained resolute that the Australian Open would start, as scheduled, on Monday.Craig Tiley spoke at a news conference on Thursday as tune-up events for the Australian Open were suspended for the day.Credit…Tennis Australia, via Associated Press“This is not about no risk,” Tiley said. “There’s no such thing as no risk. There’s always going to be risk. The objective is to minimize it as much as possible.”Restrictions on travel to a nation surrounded by water have helped Australia get and keep the virus largely under control. There were 52 active coronavirus cases in the country as of Thursday and nine people in the hospital. With a population of 25.8 million people — about four million more than live in Florida — Australia has had 28,838 cases and 909 deaths related to the virus.That more than 1,200 visitors associated with the Australian Open, including those from countries where variants of the virus have shown to be more transmissible, were given exceptions to enter the country confounded Hickie. “Our social cohesion and cooperativeness isn’t something that you can buy, and the sense that some people are just more important than others is a very un-Australian concept,” he said.In mid-January, as the players settled into their mandatory 14-day quarantine — some more cheerfully than others — Australians seemed divided. Some were aligned with tennis and government officials who looked at Victoria as a liberator rescuing international sport from the tyranny of the pandemic. Others believed that Australia’s standing as one of the leading countries in containing the virus carried more prestige than its standing as one of tennis’s four Grand Slam host countries.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      in Tennis

      As the Tennis Party in Australia Begins, an Uncertain Year Awaits

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesSee Your Local RiskVaccine InformationWuhan, One Year LaterAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAs the Tennis Party in Australia Begins, an Uncertain Year AwaitsOfficials in Australia moved mountains to make the country’s annual professional tennis swing happen. That will be far more difficult after the tour leaves this isolated, island nation.Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece was in action on Wednesday during his ground stage match against Alex de Minaur of Australia in the ATP Cup in Melbourne, Australia.Credit…Loren Elliott/ReutersFeb. 3, 2021Updated 3:17 p.m. ETMELBOURNE, Australia — By sheer force of will, professional tennis inched toward normalcy this week, with a flurry of events in a country that has managed to nearly smother the coronavirus.The three tournaments and a men’s team competition called the ATP Cup, in which players compete for their countries, have turned Melbourne Park into a sea of matches with the gates open to spectators. Hundreds of matches were scheduled this week at the tennis complex, which is on the banks of the Yarra River, just a few hundred yards down a hill from this city’s downtown. The smaller events lead into the Australian Open, the centerpiece of the summer tennis season here, which is scheduled to begin on Monday.A stern reminder of the challenge to public health represented by the events came Wednesday when Australian Open organizers said a hotel quarantine worker had tested positive for the virus. That prompted a suspension of play on Thursday and orders for all of those associated with the tennis events at the hotel to isolate in their rooms until they return a negative test.The positive test ended a 28-day run of zero community transmission in the state of Victoria, The Age, a newspaper in Melbourne, reported. The Australian Open, the first Grand Slam tournament of the year, was not immediately affected, but the positive test made clear that the event — with all its planning and precaution — could be upended if more people are infected.Before the latest setback, the word “lucky” kept flying out of the mouths of the players — lucky that their sport happens to begin its year in an isolated, island nation that decided months ago that it would do nearly anything it could to limit the spread of the coronavirus. The federal and state governments specially allowed more than a thousand people to travel from overseas for the tournament, requiring them to serve 14 days in varying degrees of lockdown to reduce the risk of bringing Covid-19 back into the community. For the players, that was the ante to compete for more than $80 million in prize money for all the events.And yet the massive effort of holding these competitions has illuminated an unpleasant truth for a sport that normally hopscotches the globe for 11 months each year. No one knows exactly what will happen to professional tennis for the rest of 2021 when the competitions in Australia conclude at the end of the month.The problem is that two of the main ingredients for tennis to be successful are open international borders and large crowds in big cities, neither of which are in abundance at the moment.There are tournaments on the calendar everywhere from the Middle East to South America and Florida, but it’s anyone’s guess how they might take place, what officials in those countries will require of anyone who wants to enter their borders, or whether players will be able to travel freely in and out of their own countries.“Everything is continuously ever-evolving,” Johanna Konta of Britain, a member of the WTA player council, said when asked recently what the rest of the year looked like both for her and her sport. “I don’t know how it will be. I don’t know how the quarantines will be. I don’t know how things will shape up.”With this week’s tuneup events shoehorned into the schedule and moved to Melbourne from their usual locations elsewhere in Australia and New Zealand, attendance has been sparse, but a trickle of spirited fans does stream through the gates each day — especially the native Serbs screaming for Novak Djokovic. A player hits a terrific shot, and a roar echoes through the courts, just as it is supposed to. Players are going through their usual routines of practice sessions, matches and massages, plus meals and coffee dates among locals in the city’s downtown restaurants.Getting to this point took months of negotiations with government officials, tens of millions of dollars, 17 chartered jets to fly the players and other essential tennis workers to the country and the hiring of hundreds of people to manage the two-week quarantine. The payoff comes next week when the tournament will allow up to 30,000 fans a day who will be sectioned off into three zones to limit each person’s exposure to someone who might potentially test positive.Healthcare workers stood at a personal protective equipment station inside one hotel where players were staying.Credit…James Ross/EPA, via Shutterstock“In Europe, it’s going to be I think far more challenging to experience something that we are experiencing here,” said Djokovic, the world No. 1 and the leader of a nascent players’ association. “We might as well enjoy it as much as we can.”As Andrea Gaudenzi, chairman of the Association of Tennis Professionals, put it Tuesday night, “We live in the now.”The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      What to Know About Covid-19 and the 2021 Super Bowl

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesSee Your Local RiskVaccine InformationWuhan, One Year LaterAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWhat to Know About Covid-19 and the Super BowlPlayers from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Kansas City Chiefs are being tested for the coronavirus more often, and just 25,000 fans will attend the game.Super Bowl LV in Tampa, Fla., will be scaled down from the usual fanfare that surrounds the N.F.L.’s marque event.Credit…Eve Edelheit for The New York TimesFeb. 2, 2021Updated 7:21 a.m. ETThe Super Bowl is unlike any other American sporting event: A football game provides the anchor for parties, fanfare, and an eye-popping TV broadcast where the commercials and halftime show are just as much of an attraction for the more than 100 million fans who will watch.But like everything else in the year since the coronavirus pandemic swept the globe, Super Bowl LV in Tampa, Fla., has been adapted to Covid-19 health guidelines and scaled down, despite the excitement over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers becoming the first N.F.L. team to play in the championship game in its home venue — Raymond James Stadium.While the football being played on Sunday will look largely the same as in other years, nearly everything else surrounding the Super Bowl will be different.Super Bowl LV: Kansas City Chiefs vs. Tampa Bay BuccaneersSunday, Feb. 7, 6:30 p.m. Eastern, CBSPlayers are being tested for Covid-19 even more.Players, coaches and members of each team’s staff have been tested for Covid-19 daily throughout the season, including on game days. Since the Buccaneers and the Chiefs qualified for the Super Bowl on Jan. 24, team personnel have been tested for coronavirus twice daily.Anyone with a confirmed positive test must stay away from their team for a minimum of 10 days. The Buccaneers and the Chiefs have not had a positive test in more than three weeks.However, two Chiefs players — receiver Demarcus Robinson and center Daniel Kilgore — came in close contact with an infected person and must isolate for at least five days, Chiefs Coach Andy Reid confirmed Monday.Since the beginning of August, about 15,000 N.F.L. players, coaches and staffers have received nearly 1 million tests, far more than any in other United States-based sports league. More than 700 players, coaches and staff members tested positive during that time.Because of concerns about exposure to the coronavirus, the Buccaneers and Chiefs have departed from the normal Super Bowl itinerary. In most years, the two opposing teams would arrive in the Super Bowl city one week in advance of the game to conduct practices and scheduled interviews with media. This year, players and coaches will do those interviews via videoconferences, as was the case throughout the 2020 regular season.To further reduce the team’s chance of infection, the Chiefs are not scheduled to arrive in Tampa until Saturday. The Buccaneers won’t have to drive far.Fewer fans will attend the Super Bowl.Super Bowls typically sell out their seating capacity, even for tickets that cost $10,000 or more. Attendance has never dipped below the 61,946 who attended Super Bowl I in Los Angeles in 1967 and has in some years topped 100,000.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      in Soccer

      Palmeiras Wins Copa Libertadores, Far From Its Fans

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesSee Your Local RiskVaccine InformationWuhan, One Year LaterIn Brazil, Risk and Reward, Side by Joyous SideThe coronavirus kept Palmeiras fans far from their team when it played Santos in the Copa Libertadores final. A last-minute winner made everyone forget the distance, and the rules.Credit…Supported byContinue reading the main storyJan. 31, 2021, 8:36 a.m. ETSÃO PAULO, Brazil — In the cramped streets around Allianz Parque, hundreds of Palmeiras fans huddled together, craning their necks to try to catch a glimpse of whatever television screen they could find. The pandemic meant they could not go to the final in Rio de Janeiro. But it also meant they could not even go into the bars and restaurants, which are restricted to takeout service on weekends.Instead, the fans improvised. A handful of them, residents of the apartment buildings and houses around the stadium, home to their beloved Palmeiras soccer team, angled their screens so they could be seen on the streets outside. Other fans crowded outside the bars and cafes, packed cheek by jowl, flags draped over their shoulders.Virus restrictions forced fans outside, where they huddled around any available screen.Their thoughts were 300 miles away, in the sweltering heat of Rio, inside the famed Maracanã, where their team was facing its rival Santos in the final of the Copa Libertadores, facing off for the greatest prize in South American club soccer.In a normal world, of course, many of them would have been there instead, flooding in by the tens of thousands, by plane and by car and by road, just to be there, to festoon the spiritual home of Brazilian soccer in green and white. This was, after all, a historic moment: the first time since 2006 that the Libertadores final had been contested by two Brazilian teams, and the first time ever that it had been contested by two teams from the state of São Paulo.Social distancing took a back seat to enthusiasm, but stadium officials in Rio still made an effort.Credit…Pool photo by Mauro PimentelThe vast majority of them could not be there, of course, because this is not a normal world. Only 5,000 fans were allowed to attend the final in person — all of them specially selected by the respective clubs, rather than through a sale of tickets, and all of them, counterintuitively, packed into the few open sections of the 78,000-seat Maracanã rather than spreading out across its vast, largely empty bowl.But even if the circumstances had been altered, the old instincts had not. Over the last 10 months, it has become clear that — no matter the risk or the restrictions — if soccer is played, for the moments that mean the most, then fans will feel an urge to be together.The final, a cautious and nervy affair, was settled on a last-minute goal that released all the tension at once.Credit…Pool photo by Ricardo MoraesIt happened in England, when Liverpool won the Premier League and when Leeds won promotion. It happened in Italy, when Napoli won the Coppa Italia. It happened in Argentina when Diego Maradona died. It is not advisable. It is not wise. It is not safe. But it appears, in some way, that it is irresistible.And so the Palmeiras fans came to Allianz Parque on Saturday, to the place that feels like home, hours before the game started, to drink and sing and wave their flags. They had waited a long time for this — their team had not been crowned South America’s champion since 1999 — and they would have to wait some more, through 90 minutes of a game defined more by its caution than its quality, played by teams more conscious of what might be lost than what might be won.A Copa catharsis: hugs in São Paulo, confetti in Rio and fireworks over Allianz Parque.Credit…Pool photo by Ricardo MoraesCredit…Victor Moriyama for The New York TimesThen, in a flurry, it happened. A melee on the sideline, and Santos’s veteran coach, Cuca, was sent off. The 90 minutes were up, the clock ticking deeper and deeper into injury time. After eight minutes, Rony, Palmeiras’s star forward, conjured a deep, searching cross. Breno Lopes, timing his jump, steered his header over the Santos goalkeeper.He raced toward the fans, and they poured over the seats to get to him and his teammates. Palmeiras had its victory. And in the cramped streets around Allianz Parque, those who could not be there felt, at last, as if they were.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      in Basket

      Sekou Smith, Award-Winning N.B.A. Reporter and Analyst, Dies at 48

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesSee Your Local RiskVaccine InformationWuhan, One Year LaterAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySekou Smith, Award-Winning N.B.A. Reporter and Analyst, Dies at 48Mr. Smith, the creator and host of NBA.com’s “Hang Time” blog and podcast, covered professional basketball for more than two decades. He died of complications of Covid-19.Sekou Smith, a reporter for NBA-TV and NBA.com, had a long career covering basketball.Credit…Turner SportsJan. 28, 2021Updated 5:58 p.m. ETThis obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here.For much of his journalism career, you would never see Sekou Smith in a sport coat. Not at the N.B.A. games he covered, not in the newsroom.“Wearing a tie? No, never happened. Wearing a suit? Oh, you can forget about it,” said Arthur Triche, who used to work in public relations for the Atlanta Hawks and regarded Mr. Smith as his best friend.That was until Mr. Smith started working as a multimedia reporter and analyst for NBA TV and NBA.com in 2009, when he became “the fashionista,” Mr. Triche said.Mr. Smith’s bold clothing choices matched his reporting style: authentic, fair and unafraid, said Michael Lee, a sports reporter for The Washington Post who met Mr. Smith almost 22 years ago. While he was tough on teams, they knew it was always merited, Mr. Lee said.“He can make enemies his friends,” he said.Mr. Smith died of complications of the coronavirus on Jan. 26 at a hospital in Marietta, Ga., where his family lives, according to Mr. Triche and Ayanna Smith, one of Mr. Smith’s sisters. He was 48.Sekou Kimathi Sinclair Smith was born on May 15, 1972, in Grand Rapids, Mich., to Estelle Louise Smith, an information technology specialist, and Walter Alexander Smith, who was a teacher and a school principal. His parents were often present at Mr. Smith’s sporting events, of which there were many: He played basketball, tennis, soccer and football and wrestled.Ayanna Smith said Sekou had especially liked riding his bike up and down Auburn Avenue, the street where they lived as children and a continuing reference point for their family’s group text messages in more recent years.“We were the ‘307 Auburn’ chat,” Ms. Smith said. “Every morning, whether it was Dad or Sekou or one of my brothers and sisters, one of us would text in there about the weather or whatever was going on.”The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      Ahead of the Australian Open, 2 Wild Weeks of Practice

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesVaccine InformationTimelineWuhan, One Year LaterAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Craziest Two Weeks of Tennis Practice EverThe organizers of the Australian Open promised local residents that the tournament would not set off a coronavirus outbreak. Making good on that promise is very complex.Tennis players waiting for transport to practice at the front of the Grand Hyatt Melbourne Hotel on Wednesday. Each player was allowed to train with one other in the first week of preparation for the tournament, with a coach overseeing. Groups of four will be permitted the second week.Credit…Asanka Ratnayake/Getty ImagesJan. 24, 2021, 3:00 a.m. ETMELBOURNE, Australia — The intricate ballet begins at sunrise and ends after dark, a complicated series of movements requiring the utmost precision for what has long been a very simple task — getting tennis players to and from the courts so they can practice ahead of a professional tournament.There is a strict routine to enforce social distancing: a series of knocks on hotel doors every five minutes, checking and rechecking that hallways are clear and that people are where they must be, whether that is in a van, or on the court, or the gym, or a dining pod, and then a thorough cleaning of their trail. The whole process, moving every available player to and from training in waves, can last almost 16 hours.Alarms not going off or a little dawdling can cost players their precious daily chance to emerge from their rooms and prepare for the Australian Open, the first major tournament of the year, scheduled to start on Feb. 8.“The amount of planning is amazing,” Kevin Anderson, the veteran South African, said of the regimen, which began early last week, soon after a fleet of players arrived in the country on specially chartered flights. “You don’t see anybody.”This is what happens when you try to bring more than 1,200 people, including hundreds of athletes, from overseas to a country that has largely rid itself of the coronavirus, and that will go to great lengths to assure that it does not return to the community.After months of intense, police-enforced lockdowns throughout the country, Australia has averaged just 11 daily cases the past two weeks. The limited number of travelers allowed in from overseas each day has accounted for most of the positive tests. In other words, in a country of more than 25 million people, community spread is largely nonexistent. The effort to keep things that way, while holding the Open and multiple warm-up events, has been bumpy. Ten people arriving on three of the chartered flights for the events, including one player, have tested positive for the coronavirus.That prompted health officials to order all 72 players on those planes to stay in their hotel rooms for 14 days.One of those 72, Paula Badosa of Spain, tested positive Wednesday, seemingly dashing any hopes that players from those flights who have repeatedly tested negative since landing might be released early from the hard lockdown. Badosa, 23, flew to Australia from Abu Dhabi, on the same flight that transported Bianca Andreescu’s coach, Sylvain Bruneau, who tested positive for the virus shortly after landing in Melbourne. All of the players had expected to be able to spend two hours practicing at a tennis center and 90 minutes in a gym every day during the two weeks leading up to the competitions. After the 72 players learned they were being locked down, organizers faced a mini-rebellion.A hotel quarantine worker in protective equipment directing a van used to transport players and support teams to Melbourne Park for their practice sessions.Credit…Asanka Ratnayake/Getty ImagesMelburnians, who were subject to a strict 111-day lockdown from June to October that closed schools and businesses and prevented them from leaving their homes for more than an hour each day, have reacted angrily. Ticket sales came to a standstill. Politicians denounced the decision to hold the competitions.“We will be in that darkest hour for a while, and then there will be a dawn,” Craig Tiley, chief executive of Tennis Australia, which organizes the Australian Open, said Friday afternoon. “That dawn will start when the events start.”The Coronavirus Outbreak More