MOSCOW, September 1. /TASS/. The Swedish national bandy team decided against participating in the 2020 Bandy World Championship, which is set to start in Russia’s Irkutsk in early October, Sweden’s national radio broadcaster Sveriges Radio reported on Tuesday.

According to the Swedish broadcaster, the national team made this decision as it is unable to make a flight to Russia due to the ongoing global spread of the novel coronavirus.

Commenting on media reports that Sweden decided to withdraw from the championship in Russia this October, Boris Skrynnik, the president of the Federation of International Bandy (FIB), told TASS that the international federation received no official documents on the issue.

"We still have no official documents stating that they [the national team of Sweden] are not coming," Skrynnik told TASS. "We reject all gossip and speculations."

"In line with the regulations, we must receive an official letter and not gossip," he said adding that, "when we receive the official letter [from Sweden] we will announce the details."

The 40th edition of the Bandy World Championship was initially scheduled to be played in the Siberian city of Irkutsk between March 29 and April 5, 2020, however the organizers announced in June that due to the COVID-19 pandemic the tournament was rescheduled for October 5-11.

Bandy was officially recognized as a winter sport competition by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 2001. However, bandy was featured as a demonstration sport at the 6th Winter Olympic Games in Norway’s Oslo in 1952. In 1955, the Federation of International Bandy (FIB) was formed by four founding countries: Norway, Finland, Sweden and the Soviet Union.

COVID-19

In late December 2019, Chinese officials informed the World Health Organization (WHO) about the outbreak of a previously unknown pneumonia in the city of Wuhan, in central China. Since then, cases of the novel coronavirus - named COVID-19 by the WHO - have been reported in every corner of the globe, including Russia.

On March 11, 2020, the WHO declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic. According to the latest statistics, over 25,744,820 people have been infected worldwide and more than 856,830 deaths have been reported. In addition, so far, over 18,024,620 individuals have recovered from the illness across the globe.

To date, 1,000,048 coronavirus cases have been confirmed in Russia, with 815,705 patients having recovered from the disease. Russia’s latest data indicates 17,299 fatalities nationwide. Earlier, the Russian government set up an Internet hotline to keep the public updated on the coronavirus situation.