No spring date, Games to begin on July 23, 2021
TOKYO: The Tokyo Olympics will open next year in the same time slot scheduled for this year’s Games. Tokyo organisers said on Monday that the opening ceremony will take place on July 23, 2021—almost exactly one year after the games were due to start this year. “The schedule for the Games is key to preparing for the Games,” Tokyo organising committee president Yoshiro Mori said. “This will only accelerate our progress.”
Last week, the IOC and Japanese organisers postponed the Olympics until 2021 because of the Covid-19 pandemic. This year’s Games were scheduled to open on July 24 and close on August 9. But the near exact oneyear delay will see the rescheduled closing ceremony on August 8. There had been talk of switching the Olympics to spring, a move that would coincide with the blooming of Japan’s famous cherry blossoms. But it would also clash with European football and North American leagues.
Mori said a spring Olympics was considered but holding the Games later gives more space to complete the qualifying events that have been postponed by the virus outbreak. “We wanted to have more room for the athletes to qualify,” Mori said.
After holding out for weeks, local organisers and the IOC last week postponed the Tokyo Games under pressure from athletes, national Olympic bodies and sports federations. It’s the first postponement in Olympic history, though there were several cancellations during wartime. The Paralympics were rescheduled to Aug 24-Sept 5.
The new Olympic dates would conflict with the scheduled World Championships in track and swimming, but those events are now expected to also be pushed back. “The IOC has had close discussions with the relevant international federations,” organising committee CEO Toshiro Muto said. “I believe the International Federations have accepted the Games being held in summer.”
Muto said the decision was made on Monday and the IOC said it was supported by all the international sports federations and was based on three main considerations: to protect the health of athletes, to safeguard the interests of the athletes and Olympic sport, and the international sports calendar.
“These new dates give the health authorities and all involved in the organisation of the Games the maximum time to deal with the constantly changing landscape and the disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic,” the IOC said. “The new dates ... also have the added benefit that any disruption that the postponement will cause to the international sports calendar can be kept to a minimum, in the interests of the athletes and the International Federations.”
Both Mori and Muto have said the cost of rescheduling the Olympics will be “massive”— local reports estimate billions of dollars—with most of the expenses borne by Japanese taxpayers.
Muto promised transparency in calculating the costs, and testing times deciding how they are divided up.
“Since it (the Olympics) were scheduled for this summer, all the venues had given up hosting any other events during this time, so how do we approach that?” Muto asked. “In addition, there will need to be guarantees when we book the new dates, and there is a possibility this will incur rent payments. So there will be costs incurred and we will need to consider them one by one. I think that will be the tougher process.”
Katsuhiro Miyamoto, an emeritus professor of sports economics at Kansai University, puts the costs as high as $4 billion. That would cover the price of maintaining stadiums, refitting them, paying rentals, penalties and other expenses.
Japan is officially spending $12.6 billion to organise the Olympics. However, an audit bureau of the Japanese government says the costs are twice that much.
WORLD EVENTS MAKE SPACE
The international swimming federation (FINA) said Monday it welcomed the new dates for the rescheduled Tokyo Olympics and would now examine ways to “revise” dates for its 2021 World Championships.
“Faced with the unprecedented need to reschedule the Olympic Games, our friends at the IOC and Tokyo 2020 have reacted with great speed and professionalism,” FINA president Julio Maglione said. “To already know the dates is very helpful to federations and athletes everywhere.”
FINA said it will now consult with the organisers of the 2021 World Championships in the Japanese city of Fukuoka “to examine a revision to the proposed dates”. The championships were initially scheduled for July 16-August 1, 2021.
World Athletics too immediately reacted to the new dates saying it would move its World Championships, slated for Eugene, Oregon, between August 6-15, 2021 to 2022.