IQA Continental Games Canceled
After the British Quidditch Cup and US Quidditch Cup were canceled, there came another terrible piece of news for Muggle quidditch about the biggest international tournaments in 2021. The International Quidditch Association (IQA) has announced that the IQA Continental Games are canceled.
In September 2020, the IQA announced simultaneously that the IQA World Cup would be postponed to 2022 or 2023 and that the IQA Continental Games would happen in summer 2021. In October, the IQA released open bidding for the tournaments, and the finalists were later chosen.
The location for the IQA European Games could have been Madrid, Spain, or Limerick, Ireland, where Division 1 of the 2021 European Quidditch Cup will be held in August. The IQA Pan-American Games should have been held outside of the United States for the first time, in either Mexico City or San Juan del Río, Querétaro, both located in Mexico. The IQA also wanted to organize the first IQA Oceania-Asian Games but didn’t receive any bids. The final locations should have been announced in December.
Credit: Ajantha Abey Quidditch Photography
The IQA made the decision after consulting with its own events department and receiving feedback in surveys from national governing bodies (NGBs). Many NGBs are limited by travel and social distancing restrictions, and their national teams cannot have proper trainings. They don’t know when the situation will be better.
Some NGBs also wanted to implement some new policies about pandemics at events, such as disinfecting equipment between games and adding sanitation stations to the bathrooms. Half of NGBs wanted even stricter policies, such as mandatory masks for everyone except athletes and officials on the pitch, more distance in seating areas, and reduced contact between teams, referees, and volunteers.
Most questions were about mandatory vaccination for IQA events. Some NGBs even said that they wouldn’t attend events if vaccination is not made mandatory; others wanted to let the event organizers decide. It is also possible that some national teams would not have been fully vaccinated by the summer because of their local vaccination timelines.
Credit: Tomáš Krabač
The IQA made the final decision because it felt that it was important to let NGBs continue in their national seasons, let athletes return to practice, and give everyone time to learn the new rule book fully. The next IQA Continental Games or IQA World Cup will be in 2022, though the IQA hasn’t decided which event will be held yet.