A mass power blackout in the Iberian Peninsula has impacted the Madrid Open tennis tournament as matches were suspended and cancelled, while an athlete got stuck in the elevator.
The power outage on Monday impacted Spain and Portugal as an abrupt electricity cut-off was experienced when Coco Gauff was giving an on-court interview after reaching the quarter-finals. The mic went off and the stadium lost light due to the outage.
British No 2 Jacob Fearnley’s match was suspended at the Manolo Santana Stadium when he was serving to stay in the match against 15th seed Grigor Dimitrov.
Fernando Romboli of Brazil informed on Instagram that he spent “30 minutes stuck in the elevator”. Later, he posted a video of servicemen forcing the door open as he came out.
The power blackout also forced fans to use their mobile phone flashlights for movement as food stalls stopped using digital payments. Fans were required to pay cash for food. Eventually, all matches were cancelled by the organisers due to the power outage.
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Sky Sports reporter Gigi Salmon, who was at the venue, gave a good account of all that transpired at the Madrid Open during the power outage. “I spoke to a number of players. Players at the hotel were told not to come on site, players on site were told not to leave,” she said.
“Simple things like they couldn’t get rackets strung and there was no power in the showers. They couldn’t make their way out onto the practice courts and they were eating their food by candlelight.”
Gauff said that she could not take a shower in the lockeroom as there was no running water and was forced to walk down to the hotel. “Traffic lights don’t work lol we got out the car after 1 hour and 45 mins slowly moving and just walked to the hotel,” Gauff wrote on Instagram.
It has been reported that power has been restored in more than 90% of areas in Spain and Portugal.
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