The FIE Olympic fencing rankings will be put on hold until events are rescheduled ©Getty Images

The International Fencing Federation (FIE) have frozen the Olympic rankings until the return of competition due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Due to the postponement of FIE events and the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, the rankings will be put on hold with the last update coming from March.

FIE have also cancelled all competitions for April, May and June to the spread of the virus which has more than 2.2 million confirmed cases to date, resulting in the deaths of over 148,000 people.

Rankings will be reactivated at the beginning of the rest of the Olympic qualification events which include the Men's and Women's Foil Grand Prix, Women's Sabre World Cup, Men’s Epée World Cup, Men's Sabre World Cup and the Women’s Epée World Cup.

Others still to take place include the four zonal Olympic qualification events with Seoul in South Korea hosting the Asia and Oceania zonal qualifier, Cairo in Egypt holding the African zonal qualifier, Panama City in Panama hosting the Americas and Madrid in Spain hosting the European qualifiers.

FIE have also stated that they will need the global health situation to be safe, fair and adequate training for athletes, a scenario where all Federations are able to participate and all the World Cup and Grand Prix events to have taken place before the zonal qualifiers.