The 2020 Spruce Meadows Masters just south of Calgary has been cancelled according to Melissa Gilligan of Global News. The event was supposed to take place on September 13, but will no longer occur because of coronavirus. There are currently 5893 cases of coronavirus in the Canadian province of Alberta and 106 deaths.
The cancellation of the Spruce Meadows Masters is interesting. The reason is because the annual worldwide equestrian event in Canada does take place until September and the city of Calgary was only cancelling public events at this time until the end of August.
The Spruce Meadows Masters is one of four grand slam events on the equestrian calendar on an annual basis. The others are in Aachen, Germany; Geneva, Switzerland; and in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands. The Dutch Masters was to be held on March 15, 2020, but was cancelled on March 13, and the CHIO Aachen event in Germany was to be held on June 7, 2020, but it was cancelled on April 22. The Geneva Masters equestrian event in Switzerland is still to take place on December 13.
It should be noted that individual show jumping was to take place at the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo on August 5. However, the event was postponed because the Olympic Games will now occur in 2021 because of coronavirus.
Canadian Olympic gold medalist Eric Lamaze of Montreal, Quebec was scheduled to compete at the Grand Slam events in equestrian this season. The gold medalist from the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing is still a high-performance show jumper even though he is currently battling cancer at age 52.
