{"id":29972,"date":"2016-08-11T11:19:44","date_gmt":"2016-08-11T18:19:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/?p=29972"},"modified":"2016-08-11T11:21:12","modified_gmt":"2016-08-11T18:21:12","slug":"venezuela-tournament-cancelled-argentina-to-host-nzl-and-cze","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/?p=29972","title":{"rendered":"Venezuela tournament canceled, Argentina to host NZL and CZE"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stuff.co.nz\/sport\/other-sports\/83033362\/black-sox-softball-tour-to-venezuela-cancelled-for-security-reasons\" target=\"_blank\">From Stuff.co.nz<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Black Sox softball tour to Venezuela cancelled for security reasons<\/strong><em><br \/>\nBy Tony Smith<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The New Zealand Black Sox softball team have been forced to abort November&#8217;s planned tour to Venezuela due to political unrest but they will play a mini-tournament in Argentina instead.<\/p>\n<p>Softball New Zealand (SNZ) chief executive Tony Giles said the Las Americas Cup tournament set to feature eight of the world&#8217;s top teams had been cancelled.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It came down to security reasons around political unrest in Venezuela, particularly in Caracas, and a little bit of fear around the Zika virus, which has since been mitigated,&#8221; Giles said.<\/p>\n<p>The New Zealand government&#8217;s Safe Travel website lists Venezuela as presenting &#8220;some risk&#8221; to &#8220;extreme risk&#8221; in some areas.<\/p>\n<p>Giles said the warnings had made it impossible for the Black Sox to get travel insurance to visit Venezuela, but &#8220;in the end the organisers cancelled the whole tournament&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The Venezuela tournament &#8211; billed by Black Sox head coach Mark Sorenson as &#8220;a virtual mini world series&#8221; &#8211; was to be critical to the Black Sox&#8217;s buildup for the 2017 world championships in Canada.<\/p>\n<p>Sorenson had been keen to tour Venezuela to test his players&#8217; resilience, but that was before the travel warnings were issued.<\/p>\n<p>Giles said after the tournament was cancelled SNZ had contacted the Argentina Softball Federation, &#8220;who have agreed to host ourselves and the Czech Republic&#8221; in a mini-tournament in Parana.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stuff.co.nz\/sport\/other-sports\/83033362\/black-sox-softball-tour-to-venezuela-cancelled-for-security-reasons\" target=\"_blank\">Click here to continue reading at Stuff.co.nz<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From Stuff.co.nz Black Sox softball tour to Venezuela cancelled for security reasons By Tony Smith The New Zealand Black Sox softball team have been forced to abort November&#8217;s planned tour to Venezuela due to political unrest but they will play a mini-tournament in Argentina instead. Softball New Zealand (SNZ) chief executive Tony Giles said the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[28,9,38,35],"tags":[577,578,401],"class_list":{"0":"post-29972","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-featured","7":"category-international","8":"category-latinamerica","9":"category-oceania","10":"tag-argfastball","11":"tag-czefastball","12":"tag-softballnewzealand","13":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29972"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29972\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29975,"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29972\/revisions\/29975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}