The Viral Games

Imagine a world of social distancing, border closures and quarantine. Tricky, we know, but try for us.Australia, 2028. Pandemic-era restrictions have forced the states to shut their border for years. Increasingly insular and self-sufficient, states and territories are gesturing towards secession. In a last-ditch effort to reunite the country behind a common cause, the federal government develops a new initiative: The Viral Games. Join the country’s top sports journos, Ange Abello and Doug Bueller, in the commentary box for the opening ceremony of this intranational, hyper sanitary sporting series.

A light breeze is grazing across Randwick Racecourse on day three of the Viral Games. Upon it, faint whispers of a supplement saga. Australia is set to fracture as in-fighting intensifies and undercuts, boycotts and corruption become the order of the day.

Lena Del Cruz, star sprinter for the NT, has everything to lose as her state announces their boycotting of the games. On this episode: distraction, deception and pandemic-era disguise as The Heart of the Territory blunders her way towards the podium. This is bigger than politics.

The Northern Territory has boycotted; the ACT and Tasmania have merged in a geographically perplexing union. Australia is broken beyond redemption, but the government can’t get its deposit back on the afterparty, so the Games are going down swinging.

With Northern Territory back in the fray and competition heating-up between Territorians and Victorians, the government has recognised a wholesale reuptake of interest in The Games. The women’s full-contact, no-contact hazmat suit wrestling is the deciding event as the country turn to each other and ask, can sport be enough to save all this?