History of Sporting Postponement

       After all the hype and build up about this Ryder Cup we get just over two hours before the weather unleashed itself onto the Celtic Manor.  The Welsh Tourist board got very upset with Nick Faldo after he told the Americans to bring their waterproofs.  But it seems like the waterproofs they brought weren't good enough as the whole American squad went to the Celtic Manor shop to purchase new waterproof trousers.  But this whole episode gave me the idea at looking at sporting postponements throughout history.  As you probably could guessed there have been many over the years and for many separate reasons.  I am just going highlight the few that caught my attentions.

       In the past there have been many reasons for postponing sporting events in the past from a verity of weather conditions to political reason with many stops to with animals along the way.  The first written evidence I could find of a sporting postponement was in St Louis, it was June 15th 1883 and a horse race was postponed due to rain.  In all probability it wasn't the first sporting postponement due to rain but it was definitely not the last as 16 drenched golfers might tell you.

       If your from the UK you will remember the chaos that happened at the start of this year, heavy snow fall across the whole country but most people to a stand still and it did to the sport as well.  On the weekend of the 9th and 10th of January 2010 only 4 out of the scheduled 46 football league games took place.  But it isn't just the football in the UK that can get held up by snow, most winter sports get postponed when it snows too much.

       The XI Olympic Winter Games in 1972 were held in Sapporo, Japan it was the first Winter Olympics to be held outside Europe and North America.  Sapporo first won the rights to host the 1940 Winter Olympics but Japan resigned as the Games' host after its 1937 invasion. The 1940 Games were later cancelled due to the Second World War. All the cities awarded Games that were cancelled due to war have since hosted the Games. 

       Berlin, London, Tokyo and Helsinki had all held their games before the 1972 Games in Sapporo but then when it came to the opening of the games, the organisers might have thought that something was trying to stop them holding the Winter Olympic Games.  A huge snowstorm hit the site of the games cause disruption and postponement during the first two days.  After a couple of days bad weather the Games got underway and Japan picked up their first Winter Olympic gold.

       There has been plenty of postponements due to political and memorial reasons.  The more famous ones are the wide spread postponement across the USA due to Martin Luther King Jr's Death on April 4th 1968 and the postponements due to the September 11th terrorist attacks in 2001.  There have also been many postponement due to medical reasons, the world of boxing and fighting has postponements weekly, I like the postponement of the fight between Foreman and Ali in Zaire 1974.  Foreman was cut during a training spar so the fight was put back a month and during that time Ali decided to have a hernia operation.

      There have been many crazy reasons why animals has postponed sporting my personal favourite was what happened to a Romanian third division football side.  The club had got into trouble with the league due to persistent pitch invasions from it fans, so the club decided to build a moat between the pitch and the fans.  But this didn't stop the fans so the club officials put crocodiles in the moat to stop the fans.  Then the crocs decided they didn't want to stay in the moat and came on to the pitch during a training session, this caused all home matches to be postponed that season.

      There have been many events postponed by many different things but I guess I can stop rambling now the golf has started again.