The chief medical officers of many of the major Olympic, Paralympic and Professional Sports in the UK formed a group to share thinking around how elite sport might best plan for a return at the appropriate time. While it was acknowledged that there were fundamental differences between the sports, including but not limited to current and future competition schedules, financial and personnel resources, potential risks of COVID-19 transmission between participants and their ability to align with any relaxation of population social distancing (SD), a collaborative approach to planning `how` elite sport might restart was agreed to be the most effective manner to inform a single dialogue with government and Public Health England. Central to this approach was the development of a five-stage model (figure 1) that set out the discrete stages that sport would need to progress through, to ultimately return to unrestricted competition, starting with stages with a lower risk of COVID-19 transmission. It was hoped that this model would help create a consistent taxonomy when in conversation with government, health agencies, athletes, coaches and sports administrators.
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