No frisbee festival in Amsterdam next summer
December 8, 2020 by Ravi Vasudevan in Livewire, News with 0 comments
The tournament organizers of Windmill, the international ultimate festival and tournament in Amsterdam, cancelled the 2021 edition due to the uncertainty about the global status of the COVID-19 pandemic next year.
Earlier this year, Windmill cancelled the 2020 event due to the pandemic.
In a statement on their blog, they said that there was a lot of debate in recent weeks about how to proceed with the 2021 event. One major reason for the cancellation was that Windmill did not want to have to exclude teams from countries who won’t have access to the vaccine by June for the tournament. They also said that there was a possibility that they could hold a more local event, or an event with fewer parties and socializing, but decided against it.
“Simply put: that’s not Windmill,” they wrote. “Our crew and the players have a passion for not only the ultimate frisbee, but also the festival side of Windmill – and the combination of these things is what makes Windmill, well, Windmill.”
Nan Derosa, Windmill chairwoman, told Ultiworld why they made the decision now instead of waiting for more vaccine news in the coming months.
“Our planning every year starts in November so being that we’re still under strict restrictions and expect to be for several more months, we knew we couldn’t really do any proper planning until things lightened up,” she said. “And we really didn’t think it was fair to the crew considering how much time it takes to plan Windmill when it still seemed very 50-50 that we would succeed at all.”
This news comes one day after WFDF president Robert “Nob” Rauch said that he is optimistic about holding the World Ultimate and Guts Championships in July in the Netherlands.
