2021 or bust for Tokyo Games

Tokyo, May 21: Olympics chief Thomas Bach said

2021 was the “last option” for holding the delayed Tokyo Games on Thursday, stressing that postponement cannot go on forever.

Bach told the BBC that he agreed with Japan’s stance that the Games will have to be cancelled if the Coronavirus pandemic isn’t under control by next year.

In March, the Tokyo 2020 Olympics were postponed to July 23, 2021 as the Coronavirus spread across the globe.

“Quite frankly, I have some understanding for (Japan’s position) because you cannot forever employ

3,000, or 5,000, people in an organising committee,” the International Olympic Committee president said.

“You cannot every year change the entire sports schedule worldwide for all the major federations.

“You cannot have the athletes being in uncertainty, you cannot have so much overlapping with a future Olympic Games,” he added.

The Olympics have never been cancelled outside of the world wars.

‘INSENSITIVE’ LOGO PULLED DOWN

A satirical mock-up depicting the Tokyo Olympics logo as the new Coronavirus has been pulled after Olympic organisers branded it “insensitive” and said it infringed copyright. The design combines the distinctive, spiky image of the Coronavirus cell with the blue-and-white Tokyo 2020 logo, and appeared on the front page of an in-house magazine published by the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan (FCCJ).

FCCJ president Khaldon Azhari said Thursday the club had decided to withdraw the image and remove it from its website after advice that its legal defence against a potential copyright breach was “not strong”.

“More importantly, we are all in this Coronavirus crisis together and clearly the cover offended some people in our host country Japan,” said Azhari.

Tokyo 2020 chief executive Toshiro Muto hailed the move, telling reporters: “We believe their response was appropriate and this is what we were hoping for as an outcome.”

Earlier, Tokyo 2020’s chief spokesman Masa Takaya had blasted the emblem as “very disappointing”. He said it was also an infringement of the copyright owned by Tokyo 2020.

— Agencies

You cannot every year change the entire sports schedule worldwide for federations. You cannot have the athletes being in uncertainty, you cannot have so much overlapping with a future Olympic Games. — THOMAS BACH, IOC president