This has been discussed a bit on the ITU discussion thread. Announcing 9 days before a regular event that it has now changed to a World Champs is crap. Athletes from the southern hemisphere can't get there to contest. Their countries have closed borders resulting in almost no international flights. Daily we are seeing in the media stories of Aussie residents still trapped overseas for months unable to secure flights home. This makes it really hard to obtain govt approval to leave the country, as such we see only one athlete had the capacity to travel to Hamburg to race. She has her partner from Europe so has a base to live and will not be stranded. For others it was too hard and too risky to travel to a race which gave no Olympic or wts points anyway. Suddenly it changes to THE WORLD CHAMPS and it's too late to organise, even if they now wanted to. A real kick in the guts for those athletes, especially with both the reigning Hamburg champions, Birtwhistle and Stanford stuck in Aus. even athletes already on the start list are aware how unfair the change is and many have voiced their opinions on the social media announcement. How can a world championship be declared when so many in the world can not be there. They don't want it.