{"id":325133,"date":"2026-03-02T15:32:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T15:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/325133\/"},"modified":"2026-03-02T15:32:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T15:32:09","slug":"middle-east-conflict-how-is-sport-dealing-with-travel-disruption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/325133\/","title":{"rendered":"Middle East conflict: How is sport dealing with travel disruption?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Dubai Tennis Championships winner Daniil Medvedev is among the tennis players facing a disruption to their schedule.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Russian&#8217;s representative said they were trying to establish how Medvedev could travel to California for next week&#8217;s Indian Wells tournament after the UAE &#8220;partially and temporarily&#8221; closed its airspace.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Finland&#8217;s Harri Heliovaara, winner of the men&#8217;s doubles event alongside Britain&#8217;s Henry Patten, said his travel plans are &#8220;still uncertain&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;All of us players, the finalists and a few other doubles players, are stuck in Dubai. [Plus] all of the ATP staff, the umpires, physiotherapists, coaches and other team and family members &#8211; a total of about 30 people,&#8221; Heliovaara wrote in his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.harriheliovaara.fi\/2026\/03\/01\/nopea-tilannepaivitys-dubaista\/\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">blog, external<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He added that the option of leaving by road had been explored, but that would involve either a five-hour drive to Muscat &#8211; although bad traffic jams have been reported at the Oman border &#8211; or a journey exceeding 10 hours to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The ATP said it remains in direct contact with those affected, with &#8220;a small number of players and team members&#8221; still in Dubai being accommodated in official tournament hotels &#8220;where their immediate needs are being fully supported&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The ATP Challenger Tour event in Fujairah, UAE is going ahead as planned this week, but operating with heightened security measures and taking place behind closed doors as a precautionary step. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dubai Tennis Championships winner Daniil Medvedev is among the tennis players facing a disruption to their schedule. The&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":325134,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-325133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325133\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/325134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}