Recorded by us at the Grand Prix of Qatar in March 2019 – the start of the season for the last normal year of sport and everyday life for a long time. In the meantime, speculation is rampant whether and how it will continue, although the current development was foreseeable months ago and many warned against it at the time.

About the digitization of journalism in everyday life & sports

In the past, only the initiated, and today almost every child, knew how the basis of digitization works. Everything is reduced to a state of zero or one in the end. Even in the first corona lockdown, we were amazed at how many journalists worked in the same way. If Covid-19 came a day with a slight improvement, headlines immediately followed about an alleged calming of the situation and positive trends. Was this a weekend, it doesn’t matter, the main thing is that the numbers looked better. Usually the opposite happened the next day, and gloomy prognoses followed immediately. It ran exactly the same way over the holidays at the turn of the year. Hardly surprising, everything looked better in around 90 percent of the closed medical practices. But no matter, the one thing came back straight away and many headlined a positive development. Pure idiocy, actually, but almost everyone followed this pattern.

The Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas. When this event was on the calendar for April 2021, we had already made it clear on November 6, 2020 that such a date is unrealistic. The same was true for the Sepang test planned for February and for this reason there was no on-off from us on these topics. Quite different, however, with most other sports portals. In the end we were spot on and all speculation was for the foxes.

Apparently tough times for reporters

From our point of view, the current circumstances are anything but tough times for sports journalists. In the first lockdown and in the current extended winter break with historical topics and retrospectives, we made progress twice as fast as originally planned. We recently switched to English as a second language and the response was overwhelming, also and especially due to well-researched historical reviews. We already noticed at the Valencia weekend that Valentino Rossi had the worst season of his GP career in 2020. Others apparently needed until January. Sure, we are very fortunate to have one of the most extensive archives in motorcycle racing that exist. But hardly anyone suspects how much work is behind sorting, cataloging and condensing all of this into unique reports about individual drivers.

A recording by Horst Fügner from the 1950s – it is hard to imagine what this man would have achieved if he had grown up in England, for example, instead of GDR. If you find a more detailed and richly illustrated story about him (coming soon on our site in english as well) elsewhere than in our history, please report it to us.

The second wave was foreseeable

When sports journalists today ask themselves in public whether there will be new border closings due to the pandemic, we are amazed. Some readers are sure to wonder what planet such people live on. It would be difficult for anyone to deny that the second wave of pandemics was in sight. Just like the fact that experts warned of mutations in the first lockdown and of a second wave even without them. The most open question today is why the political leadership of practically all states failed completely against this background. If Austrian hoteliers apparently brought the pandemic into their country while hunting in South Africa, it is not only our hair that stands on end. Just like before the fact that in Germany and Switzerland tens of thousands flew on vacation every day over the festive season and, above all, were allowed to do so. The result is well known and now, unsurprisingly, it will hit sport again, see the cancellation of the famous Lauberhorn race in Switzerland due to the pandemic and future events.

Our photo from the visit to the “Destination of Speed” in BuriRam (Thailand), here the view from the back of the main grandstand. Of course, we have indeed already booked hotel and domestic flights for MotoGP in October. In the short term you never have the slightest chance to do so anyway, due to the much too limited supply of overnight accommodation there, as in Aragon and Spielberg. But will we really arrive?

Provisional combined calendar with (too) many question marks

No matter whether for MotoGP or WorldSBK. Dorna obviously did a great service to many scribes who like to occupy themselves with speculation. But apart from countless, mostly completely pointless headlines, what do you and your readers get out of it? The ultimate loss of credibility, perhaps. We still remember the lockdown in spring 2020 far too well, when, for example, Indianapolis was used as an alternative to Austin. From the penultimate week of March onwards, we always said the same thing: there would be no races before midsummer. The following is still variant 2 of the combined calendar published by FIM and Dorna, with many question marks.

The indicator is terrifying
If you are seriously interested in visiting WorldSBK Events 2021 or just want to know what is happening: A good barometer for possible realization of individual events is the advance ticket sale. At the Superbike World Championship it is crystal clear that there is currently not a single event where you can buy tickets! It is a bit more perfidious for MotoGP. Supposedly, you get to the ticket pre-sale via an active button (“Tickets”). But what happened here on January 28, 2021 at 1:15 p.m., seemed rather frightening or probably also amusing for some viewers. With two exceptions, the same thing happens everywhere, you can enter your email address, nothing more is possible.

“Home to the Reich” was the slogan in Austria in the 1930s, the consequences of which were devastating for the country and the population. But why Spielberg is suddenly leading a 2nd German Grand Prix in the 3rd millennium is not explained here. In any case, it is the only event for which tickets can currently be ordered and of course Styria still belongs to Austria.
This message came at the 2nd race in Qatar, possibly a bad omen?