Image credit - Natalia Donets. Caption: Participants of the international karatedo competition, held as part of the Women’s Karatedo Festival.

CHISINAU, March 11 - On Tuesday, March 10, three days after the news about Moldova's first coronavirus broke, the curtain closed. No more studying. Kindergartens, schools, and universities are to be closed. No more sport - all large gatherings of 50 people or more are officially prohibited until April 1. With thousands of Moldovans living in Italy, the country with the highest number of positive cases in Europe, a coronavirus outbreak at home was bound to happen. The only question was when.

Earlier last week, as reports would later say, a Moldovan woman in her 60s escaped medical care in Italy. On Saturday, March 7, she flew back home. By the time her plane landed, her health was deteriorating rapidly. She became the country’s first coronavirus case. Earlier that morning, Moldovan Karatedo Federation hosted the 3rd Women's Karatedo Festival. It became one of the last mass sports events to make it through before the precautionary measures were imposed by the country's authorities. A blissful celebration of women that managed to avoid the coronavirus storm. 

The festival is the brainchild of the Federation's General Secretary Ana-Maria Stratu, who also serves at the IOC Young Leader and member of the IOC Women in Sport Commission. For 10 years, Ana-Maria has been the only female athlete on the country's Karate national team. A few years ago, Ana-Maria decided it was time to use her favorite sport to break the gender barrier and empower Moldovan girls.

Stratu's idea of creating a karatedo festival to be held on the eve of the International Women's Day gained the strong support of the Federation's President Oleg Abalin. She applied for a IOC's Young Leaders program grant designed to help IOC Young Leaders to launch grassroots sports projects aiming to bring positive changes to their communities. Then, Ana-Maria managed to gain the support of UN Women Moldova and the Embassy of Sweden in Chisinau- and the rest was history.

The first edition of the festival gathered 50 participants. This year, the number doubled. One hundred girls, aged 5 to 18, took part in the karate master class that opened the Festival, while 30 female athletes from Moldova and Ukraine took part in the international competition.  
 As the Festival's popularity grows, Moldovan Karatedo Federation is coming closer and closer to achieving the goal of equal gender representation. 
Thankfully, Women's Karatedo Festival could avoid the coronavirus chaos. Not all of Moldova's sports events were so lucky. The country's football season was scheduled to start later this weekend. Later this month, Moldovan football team is set to play one of the biggest games of the season - a friendly against Russia. The fate of the matches is yet unknown. Everything will depend on the severity of coronavirus spread in Moldova. By the evening of Tuesday, March 10, the number of confirmed cases rose to 3.