Tokyo Olympics postponed to 2021 due to coronavirus
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and local Japanese organizers bowed to the inevitable on Tuesday by postponing the Tokyo Games to 2021 in light of the global coronavirus pandemic which has claimed the lives of more than 17,000 people.
Postponing is likely to cost billions of dollars, present a massive logistical challenge and have a huge knock on effect to individual sports.
IOC president Thomas Bach and the Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, had a telephone conversation and “concluded that the Games of the XXXII Olympiad in Tokyo must be rescheduled to a date beyond 2020 but not later than summer 2021, to safeguard the health of the athletes, everybody involved in the Olympic Games and the international community.”
Speaking later Bach added specific dates had not been discussed, saying: “The coordination committee and the organizing committee will do that.”
More than 400,000 infections have been recorded as health systems across the globe battle to cope. Countless governments have imposed drastic restrictions on their citizens with international travel slashed.
Read also: 1.3 billion Indians ordered to stay home in 21-day national lockdown
“It would have been unthinkable for us to continue to prepare for an Olympic Games at a time the nation and the world no less is enduring great hardship,” said Andy Anson, chief executive of the British Olympic Association. “A postponement is the right decision.”
The German Olympic Sports Confederation hailed the “correct and enormously important step,” while Alejandro Blanco, president of the Spanish Olympic Committee tweeted it was: “Great news.”
Now the event due to run to August 9, and the subsequent Paralympics, will be delayed. That in itself is a gigantic task requiring the rebooking of millions of nights of hotel rooms and the reworking of television and sponsorship contracts worth billions of dollars.
Japanese experts believe the cost to the country could amount total 640 to 670 billion yen (5.8 billion dollars to 6.1 billion dollars).
Bach, however, said postponement was “about protecting life. Finance does not have priority now.”
World Athletics, the governing body of the Olympic showcase sport, welcomed the postponement, saying “it is what athletes want.”
World football governing body FIFA welcomed the decision, saying it “firmly believes that the health and well-being of all individuals involved in sporting activities should always be the highest priority.”
American broadcasters NBC are also likely to want the Games held to avoid a clash with US domestic sport seasons, suggesting a full year delay to July-August 2021 could be possible.
Nonetheless, the IOC said the Games will keep the name Olympic and Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020.
Japan will also retain the Olympic flame though organizers said the torch relay has been suspended two days before a scaled-down start from near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station.
Bach and Abe “agreed that the Olympic Games in Tokyo could stand as a beacon of hope to the world during these troubled times and that the Olympic flame could become the light at the end of the tunnel in which the world finds itself at present.” (dpa)
