Games to start on July 23 next year
Paralympic event to follow a month later
TOKYO: The Tokyo Olympics, which were postponed due to the global coronavirus pandemic, will be held from July 23-Aug 8 in 2021, the Games’ organising committee said yesterday.
The 2020 Olympics had been scheduled to take place from July 24-Aug 9 in the Japanese capital this year but were postponed for the first time in history due to the ongoing spread of the novel coronavirus.
“The Olympics will be held from July 23 to August 8, 2021. The Paralympics will be held from August 24 to September 5,” Tokyo Games organising committee president Yoshiro Mori told a press conference after agreeing on the new dates with the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
“We agreed that the timing of the event will be in summer as originally planned, considering the coronavirus... and a certain amount of time needed for preparations, selection and qualification of athletes.”
Mori added that the Games taking place during the summer vacation will allow many people, including spectators, to participate.
In a statement, the IOC said the new dates would give health authorities and organisers “the maximum time to deal with the constantly changing landscape and the disruption caused by the Covid19 pandemic.”
The new dates were decided from among several proposed time frames, including springtime, to avoid major conflicts with the international sports calendar and to minimise the logistical challenges faced by organisers.
A task force established by the Tokyo Games organising committee charged with handling the delay opted for a similar time frame in 2021 in order to use existing plans for the Games as much as possible.
Japan, which had seen relatively few cases of coronavirus infections until this month, was coming under mounting pressure from athletes and sports organisations around the world to reschedule the event due to escalating health concerns and the Covid-19 impact on training and Olympic qualification.
Last Tuesday, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and IOC president
Thomas Bach agreed to postpone the tournament following a talk but keep the “Tokyo 2020” branding despite the year-long delay.
The Olympic flame will remain burning in Japan after arriving as scheduled from Greece on March 20.
The Summer Games had never been postponed in their 31 editions since the first modern Olympics in 1896, although they were cancelled in 1916, 1940 and 1944 due to wars.
The Tokyo Olympics are set to be the largest in history, with over 10,000 athletes competing in 339 events across 33 sports should the current programme remain the same.
UNPRECEDENTED TASK
The postponement has handed organisers the “unprecedented” task of rearranging an event seven years in the making, and Tokyo 2020 CEO Toshiro Muto has admitted the additional costs will be “massive”.
According to the latest budget, the Games were due to cost US$12.6 billion, shared between the organising committee, the government of Japan and Tokyo city.
The postponement affects every aspect of the organisation — hotels, ticketing, venues and transport being among the major headaches.
Hotels have had to cancel bookings, dealing them a bitter blow at a time when tourism is already being hammered by the coronavirus.
There is still uncertainty about whether ticket-holders will get refunded.
Another thorny issue is the athletes’ village, which was due to be converted into luxury apartments after the Games, some of which have already found buyers.
The Japanese government had touted the Games as the “Recovery Olympics”, designed to show how the country had bounced back from the 2011 triple disaster of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown in the northeastern Fukushima region.
The Games are now being billed as the expression of humanity’s triumph over the coronavirus.
“We are embarking on an unprecedented challenge,” said Mori earlier yesterday.
“But I believe it is the mission of the Tokyo 2020 organising committee to hold the Olympics and Paralympics next year as a proof of mankind’s victory” against the virus.