Looking for a Sport to Watch? It Won’t Be Easy

The world is virtually sports-free at the moment, but fans could still find a sport being contested somewhere if they searched hard enough. In Russian soccer, it was Sochi 2, Krasnodar 0. In Turkish basketball, Fenerbahce 84, Tofas 75. In women’s Australian rules football, Greater Western Sydney 26, Adelaide 21.

These scores, which would ordinarily be buried in the blizzard of worldwide sporting results, stood out this weekend. Not because the games were particularly remarkable, but because they were played at all. All of the major leagues in the United States, plus golf, tennis and other sports have shut down because of the spread of the coronavirus. The top soccer and rugby leagues did the same in Europe.

Just about all sports in China and Japan have been idle for weeks. The soccer slate for Sunday, normally chock-full of games from nations big and small, consisted of matches in only a handful of regions: South and Central America, Africa, Australia, Russia and some former Soviet nations, and some Asian countries that were not at the epicenter of the pandemic, like Vietnam and Singapore. The rest of the world was virtually sports free. Here is a look at the games and events that are still bring held.

For now. While human sports have been shutting down, horse racing has proved to be surprisingly resilient, even in places like France and Britain, which are all but closed down. In New York, restaurants and schools were ordered closed, yet Aqueduct was open for horse racing without fan attendance this weekend, financed by bettors at home and at simulcast locations. On Monday, the New York Racing Association said the track would continue to offer live racing.

There was also racing at Gulfstream in South Florida and Santa Anita in California. There were no fans, but jockeys, trainers and, of course, horses were all busy with their usual jobs. “Very strange,” jockey John Velazquez told The Miami Herald of racing at a nearly empty Gulfstream Park. “It’s a little bit sad.

” Cheltenham in England ran its prestigious horse racing festival last week, and 250,000 fans showed up over the four days, down just 5 percent from last year. Spectators pressed eagerly against one another to cheer Al Boum Photo to a repeat victory in the Gold Cup, and Princess Anne and other members of the royal family were among them. With the conclusion of the festival, racing in Britain will now take place without fans at least through the end of March.