As „The Canberra Times“ revealed, the officials of the Australian Volleyball Federation have spent 24 hours trying to locate the missing Venezuela Women’s NT as they were told the South American delegation will land at the Canberra Airport at 6 am local time on Saturday. Then, the Australian VF officials got the information that the Canberra Airport had no knowledge of the flight at all and even less about its arrival time. So, the game Australia vs. Venezuela at the Final Four had to be canceled at first and ended by a forfeit, first-ever in the Grand Prix history.
„The Canberra Times“ speculates the government of Venezuela was not able to book plane tickets to its Women’s NT due to anti-government riots in the country’s capital, Caracas, in which more than 100 people were killed and 1,500 people injured in the clashes between the police and demonstrators. Furthermore, the same media reports that Venezuelan government wanted to prevent its Women’s NT players from using a trip to the Grand Prix Final Four as a reason to escape from an unstable situation in their home country as, allegedly, they had a plan to do so. In that case, they would join 52,000 more Venezuelan citizens who sought asylum this year only.
Australian Federation considers re-scheduling the bronze-medal encounter to give the chance to the Venezuelan National Team to play at least one match in the Final Four.
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