IOC head: 2021 Olympics are like a jigsaw puzzle

The numbers Sunday morning were alarming.

International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach had insisted for weeks that the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo would be held this summer as scheduled even as IOC officials monitored around the clock the spread of COVID-19 and consulted with the World Health Organization.

Bach’s position shifted abruptly as he and IOC officials reviewed the latest coronavirus tracking data Sunday morning.

“The situation changed very rapidly,” Bach recalled.

Bach and IOC officials were particularly concerned about the beginning of an outbreak in Africa. But it wasn’t just Africa. There were trouble spots all over the planet.

“We saw the dynamic developing in South America and in U.S. and in other countries,”

Bach said

Bach called an emergency meeting of the IOC executive board for later Sunday to take the first steps on what he called the “roads to postponement,” a path that in less than 48 hours would lead the IOC and Japanese officials to take the unprecedented step of postponing the Olympic Games.

“What we can say is that it is an unprecedented crisis for humankind,” Bach said “We have never seen such a spread of a virus worldwide before. Therefore, it is also an unprecedented challenge for the Olympic Games.”

Bach on Wednesday addressed the challenge of moving the Tokyo Games from this summer to 2021 as well widespread criticism that the IOC should made the decision sooner.

“This is like a jigsaw puzzle putting together,” Bach said. “And every piece has to fit. If you take out one piece the whole puzzle is destroyed. Therefore everything has to come together and everything is important.

“I’m really confident we can also master this first ever challenge. The Games have never been postponed before. We have no blueprint. But we are nevertheless confident that we can put a beautiful jigsaw puzzle together and we’ll then in the end have wonderful Olympic Games.”

Putting the pieces together will be largely up to a task force formed Tuesday by the IOC Tokyo coordination commission and Tokyo 2020, the local organizing committee. The task force, Bach said, calls itself “Here We Go.”

But Bach and the IOC continue to come under fire for not acting sooner to the COVID-19 pandemic. Tuesday’s postponement announcement came more than a week after England’s Premier League and other top soccer leagues, the NBA, NHL and Major League Baseball put their seasons on hold.

week.

Also Wednesday, general manager Jim Nill told ESPN that he and team president Jim Lites have voluntarily taken 50% cuts in pay.

Sharks Sports & Entertainment is the parent company of the San Jose Sharks and San Jose Barracuda, and operates SAP Center, Solar4America Ice locations in San Jose and

Fremont and the Sharks Foundation.

Also Wednesday, the league announced the postponement of the scouting combine, the NHL Awards, and the NHL draft. Those events were scheduled for June 1-6 in Buffalo, N.Y., June 18 in Las Vegas, and June 26-27 in Montreal, respectively.

The NHL said the location, timing and format of the draft and draft lottery would be announced “when details are finalized.”