The Chinese city of Tianjin will host the 2022 Four Continents Figure Skating Championships, a top-level February event for skaters from Africa, the Americas, Asia and Oceania, the International Skating Union (ISU) announced on Friday.

That will make Tianjin the second city on the Chinese mainland to stage the renowned Four Continents Championships, which was held in Beijing back in 2003. 

The annual event was scheduled to take place in Sydney, Australia, before the world championships next year, but was called off by the ISU council in the same announcement as the organization cited "the pandemic developments and related impact on the organizers and participants of ISU Events."

It's the third top-notch senior figure skating event to be canceled or postponed so far this fall as the new season of figure skating worldwide was about to take off.

The Grand Prix Final scheduled for December in Beijing – one of the test events for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics – was postponed in October followed by the cancellation of Skate Canada, the second stop of this season's ISU Grand Prix series.

The skating season kicks off on October 23 in Las Vegas, where top American skaters such as Nathan Chen, Vincent Zhou, Bradie Tennell and Mariah Bell will take to the ice in empty arenas.

(Cover image: Sui Wenjing and Han Cong of China perform in the Pairs Short Program during the ISU Four Continents Figure Skating Championships in Seoul, South Korea, February 6, 2020. /VCG)