Spain’s power outage plunges Madrid Open tennis into chaos – with moment electricity went out caught on camera, play unable to start, players eating by candlelight and fans stuck in the dark

A massive power outage in Spain and Portugal plunged the Madrid Open into chaos – and left Britain’s Jacob Fearnley in limbo.

You could scarcely make it up: in the first year of the ATP ditching line judges on clay in favour of technology, one of the sport’s premier events was brought to a grinding halt.

Fearnley had just broken as his opponent Grigor Dimitrov served for the match when umpire Adel Nour announced that the power had gone down, meaning the electronic line calling system was disabled.

Sky Sports’ Gigi Salmon reported that a loud bang was heard in the stadium before the announcement was made.

Last year this would not have been an issue because technology was considered unnecessary on clay, where traditionally the umpire would simply check the mark on the court if a linejudge’s call was queried.

After almost 10 minutes of waiting in vain for the power to come back on, Nour decided to get on with things and call all the lines himself.

One problem was solved but another emerged. The so-called ‘spider cam’ which swoops down to record aerial footage before levitating once the ball is in play, was frozen close to the court and could not be moved without the power.

Tournament referee Cedric Mourier emerged and decided play could not continue with the camera in players’ eyeline, so Fearnley and Dimitrov were sent back to the locker room as play was halted on all courts.

Gradually news filtered through that the power cut was far more serious. There were pictures circulating of massive traffic deadlocks in Madrid’s Plaza de Cibeles as the traffic lights had gone down, and then news emerged of an outage extending across swathes of the Iberian Peninsula.

At the Madrid Open’s Caja Magica site there were chaotic scenes of fans plunged into darkness as they tried to exit the stadiums through underground staircases.

Data from Spain’s national grid showed a drop of 26GW to 12GW in a matter of seconds. Reports online suggest the cause was a fire in southern France which knocked out one of the main high-voltage powerlines.

Spain’s national grid said in a statement on X: ‘Plans to restore the electricity supply have been activated in collaboration with companies in the sector following the zero that occurred in the peninsular system.

‘The causes are being analysed and all resources are being dedicated to solving it. We will continue to report.’

So far greater issues are at stake than the loss of momentum in a Scotsman’s tennis match, but the timing was unfortunate for Fearnley nonetheless.

Play was cancelled until 2pm Spanish time (1pm UK), so even that extremely optimistic estimate would mean a delay of one hour.