Putting off the show will cost Japan billions

TOP ATHLETES ARE NOT ONLY ONES PAYING A HUGE PRICE

FOR all that logic has suggested for some time the Olympics and Paralympics could not go ahead this summer, it was understandable that there was some dragging of feet before the decision was made.

The postponement of any sporting event at a late stage causes no end of logistical issues and costs.

But the postponement of the greatest sporting show on earth, one which has already cost £10.8billion and has billions more riding on it, is everybody’s nightmare.

Financial experts were quick to rush out estimates of a £3.8bn hit to the Japanese economy.

Most host nations expect to take a long-term hit – Athens is still paying off the £12bn it cost to host the 2004 Games – but few are hit before and after.

With more than 11,000 athletes due to take part, 7.8million tickets to be sold and half a million spectators, the hole left in Tokyo’s economy will be significant.

In addition, commercial contracts with sponsors may yet be unpicked and renegotiated by companies keen to assess the hit to their own finances.

There is also the headache of venues which were set to start recouping costs from September but will now have to cancel events.

Athletes were united in welcoming the certainty if not the outcome. Dina Asher

Smith tweeted a heart and ‘Tokyo 2021’.With the Olympic qualification model in tatters, teams not fully selected and warm-up events set to be cancelled, the prospect of the right competitors going in cold or not at all was real.

For all athletes the impact will vary. Katerina Johnson-Thompson, below, suggested she had “waited eight years” and asked: “What’s another one in the grand scheme?” But depending on which sport they compete in, where they are on that curve, for each who benefits another will fear that their medal hopes are withering on the vine.

The sporting landscape will also be shifted with the Olympics now set to clash with the World Athletics Championships in Oregon in August next year. Every switch brings a new clash and a new headache. What the organisers made clear was their hope that a rearranged Games can act as a beacon through the gloom. “That the Olympic flame could become the light at the end of the tunnel in which the world finds itself at the moment,” they said.

It was a hopeful piece of rhetoric on a miserable day when even the greatest sporting show on earth was momentarily defeated by an invisible foe.