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Tokyo Games postponement appears inevitable as countries grow impatient with IOC Tokyo Games postponement appears inevitable as countries grow impatient with IOC
(about 3 hours later)
Postponement of the Tokyo Olympics appeared increasingly inevitable Monday, as a growing number of countries signaled their athletes would not participate if the Games were held as scheduled this summer. Postponement of the Tokyo Olympics appeared increasingly inevitable Monday, as a growing number of countries signaled their athletes would not participate if the Games were held this summer and Japanese officials conceded for the first time that a delay was possible.
A whirlwind 24-hour period started Sunday with International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach issuing a letter to Olympic athletes, saying for the first time that the IOC was considering delaying the Summer Games because of the novel coronavirus pandemic. He said canceling the Olympics altogether had been ruled out and said the IOC would consider different scenarios and make a final decision within the next four weeks. A whirlwind 24-hour period started Sunday with International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach issuing a letter to Olympic athletes, saying the IOC was considering delaying the Summer Games because of the novel coronavirus pandemic. Since 1896, the Summer Olympics have taken place every four years except for 1916, 1940 and 1944, when they were canceled because of world wars. Bach said a cancellation had been ruled out and that the IOC would consider different scenarios and make a final decision within the next four weeks.
That long timetable led Canada to call for a postponement Sunday night and say it would not send any athletes to Tokyo this summer. Australia and Germany followed with similar announcements Monday, and other countries, such as Brazil, Norway and Slovenia, have either urged a postponement or said conditions must improve if they're to send athletes to Tokyo this summer. That long timetable led Canada to call for a postponement Sunday night and say it would not send any athletes to Tokyo if the Games began as scheduled July 24. Australia and Germany followed with a similar announcement Monday, and other countries, such as Great Britain, Brazil, Norway and Slovenia, either urged a postponement or said conditions must improve if they're to participate.
Later Monday, Dick Pound, the longest-serving IOC board member, told USA Today "postponement has been decided," though the IOC gave no indication Monday that a delay was certain. In a request to comment on Pound's assertion, an IOC spokesman said, "It is the right of every IOC Member to interpret the decision of the IOC [executive board] which was announced yesterday."Later Monday, Dick Pound, the longest-serving IOC board member, told USA Today "postponement has been decided," though the IOC gave no indication Monday that a delay was certain. In a request to comment on Pound's assertion, an IOC spokesman said, "It is the right of every IOC Member to interpret the decision of the IOC [executive board] which was announced yesterday."
Pound, who did not return phone messages Monday, is one of 100 IOC members, having joined the committee in 1978 but is not one of the 15 members of the IOC's powerful executive committee, the decision-making body that plays a pivotal role in all important Olympic matters. He did speak to the Canadian Press, striking a less-definitive tone. Pound is one of 100 IOC members, having joined the committee in 1978. He is not one of the 15 members of the IOC's powerful executive board, which plays a pivotal role in all important Olympic matters.
"You're looking at a postponement," Pound said. "I think that's out there now. Aruban IOC Executive Board member Nicole Hoevertsz said in an email Monday afternoon that the board "discussed and took a decision about" postponement Sunday, signaling the IOC had not changed its stance. She then pointed to the portion of IOC's official statement that said it would start discussions about postponement scenarios and was confident those discussions would be completed within four weeks. Postponement of any length involves many complexities, with global and local ramifications on athletes and residents, sponsors and television networks.
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"We're all reading the tea leaves and so on, but the Japanese themselves are talking about postponing. A lot of National Olympic Committees and countries are calling for a postponement." Pound did not return messages Monday. He did speak to the Canadian Press, striking a less-definitive tone.
IOC Executive Board member Nicole Hoevertsz said in an email that the board "discussed and took a decision about" postponement Sunday. She pointed to the portion of IOC's official statement that said the IOC would start discussions about postponement scenarios and was confident those discussions would be completed within four weeks. Postponement of any length has a variety of ramifcations, internationally on various sports calendars and locally on the availability of various venues and facilities in Tokyo, with a full year's delay preferable for some constituents and a shorter duration for others. "You're looking at a postponement," Pound said. "I think that's out there now. … We're all reading the tea leaves and so on, but the Japanese themselves are talking about postponing. A lot of National Olympic Committees and countries are calling for a postponement."
For the first time Monday, Japanese authorities acknowledged that postponement was a real possibility. Until Monday, Japan had insisted that the Games must go ahead as scheduled, although Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said last week the priority must be to hold the Olympics in a “complete manner.” On Monday, he told parliament this might mean the dates would have to change.
“What we are going to do before anything else is to start by simulating about whether we postpone one month, three months, five months, one year,” said Yoshiro Mori, president of the Tokyo 2020 Organizing Committee. “We need to make a simulation about the various scenarios.”
Japan had insisted until now that the Games must go ahead, although Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said last week the priority must be to hold the Olympics in a “complete manner.”
Olympic officials concede Tokyo Games may be postponed; Canada won’t send athletes in 2020
On Monday, he told parliament this might mean the dates would have to change.
“If that is difficult, we would have no choice but to decide to postpone, with athletes as the first priority,” Abe said, underlining that an outright cancellation is not an option.“If that is difficult, we would have no choice but to decide to postpone, with athletes as the first priority,” Abe said, underlining that an outright cancellation is not an option.
Olympics Minister Seiko Hashimoto said she was “glad to hear” that the IOC did not believe cancellation is an option. Later Monday, Tokyo 2020 Organizing Committee president Yoshiro Mori acknowledged it was time to consider alternatives.
Mori said the IOC and Japan would like to “closely examine” the various scenarios open to them over the next four weeks, adding that they would not start with the assumption the Games would definitely have to be postponed but couldn’t avoid discussing that possibility. “What we are going to do before anything else is to start by simulating about whether we postpone one month, three months, five months, one year,” Mori said. “We need to make a simulation about the various scenarios.”
For each scenario, organizers would have to work out whether they could still secure the Olympic venues for all 33 sports, as well as for the Paralympics, and what the costs would be. Olympic officials concede Tokyo Games may be postponed; Canada won’t send athletes in 2020
Olympics Minister Seiko Hashimoto said she was “glad to hear” that the IOC was not considering canceling the Games, and Mori said the IOC and Japan would like to “closely examine” the various scenarios.
For athletes, ambiguity regarding postponement has led to frustration. Athletes have continued to train as facilities have shuttered and governments have imposed restrictions. Over the weekend, USA Swimming and USA Track & Field called for the Games to be postponed, with USA Swimming specifically asking for a delay until 2021. Both federations cited protecting athletes’ physical and mental health. USA Gymnastics joined them Monday, after polling athletes over the weekend. Sebastian Coe, head of World Athletics, the international governing body for track and field, responded to Bach’s letter Sunday by writing to Bach the current schedule is “neither feasible nor desirable.”
The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee said in a statement Sunday it is “eager to explore alternatives,” but the country’s governing body has yet to take a firm position on whether to halt the Olympics.
“Multiple athletes have expressed one thing among the many that would help reduce their anxiety is if the USOPC would at some point make a clear recommendation to the IOC on behalf of American athletes, in terms of what we would like to see,” table tennis Olympian Xiao Han, the head of the USOPC’s athlete advisory council, said in a phone interview Monday. “Even if not everybody agrees with it, I think having that will give athletes at least a piece of certainty in these uncertain times.”
Germany on Monday became the latest country to announce that it would not send athletes to Tokyo this summer. Michael Schirp, a spokesman for the German team, said about 200 German athletes participated in a teleconference Saturday evening with the country’s top Olympic officials to voice their concerns. They were given a survey to complete, gauging their willingness to compete this summer. Their feelings were supposed to guide the German response, Schirp said, but after the IOC said a decision could take another four weeks, Alfons Hörmann, head of German’s Olympic committee, decided he had to act sooner.
Great Britain subsequently joined the chorus.
“If the virus continues as predicted by the Government, I don’t think there is any way we can send a team,” British Olympic Association chair Hugh Robertson told Sky Sports News.
Beyond determining what is feasible from a public health standpoint, postponement would be an enormously complicated undertaking.
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For each scenario, organizers would have to work out whether they could still secure the Olympic venues for all 33 sports, as well as for the Paralympics, and what the costs would be. There are also doubts about the availability of some sites, including the Olympic Village, where hundreds of apartments have been sold by a consortium of real estate developers for occupancy after the Games had been scheduled to conclude Aug. 9, as well as the need to secure the planned media headquarters at the Tokyo Big Sight, a tightly booked conference center.
“We have to go through each of them one by one,” Mori said. “Considering just these things alone would take an enormous time.”“We have to go through each of them one by one,” Mori said. “Considering just these things alone would take an enormous time.”
Mori hinted that organizers would prefer to keep the Olympics within this calendar year when he said: “We are 2020, so that is the direction for now.”Mori hinted that organizers would prefer to keep the Olympics within this calendar year when he said: “We are 2020, so that is the direction for now.”
But Mori and Tokyo 2020 CEO Toshiro Muto stressed that the cancellation was not in the cards, and they were happy to have heard the same message from the IOC. For athletes, the length of a delay would alter drastically who is able to qualify or excel, with wide varieties depending on the sport. A long delay could mean some aging veterans miss the chance at a final Olympics. Some athletes, particularly female gymnasts, have small windows during which they are the best in the world and might prefer to compete closer to the time at which they had been preparing to peak.
“Probably, the IOC was thinking that cancellation would not be desirable for athletes and all the stakeholders,” Muto said. “And this is what we have been saying all along. We totally agree with that.” NBC executives also have been in conversation with Olympic officials, and their wishes likely carry weight. More than 70 percent of the IOC’s nearly $6 billion from the current four-year Olympic cycle comes from TV revenue. And of that TV revenue, NBC and parent company Comcast, pay around half of it.
Japan’s official budget for the Games is around $12.6 billion, but some estimates suggest the total cost could be twice that amount. One former NBC executive believed the company would be satisfied with postponing the games exactly a year. A shorter postponement — into the fall of this year, for instance, would force the Olympics to compete with football and a number of other events that already have been pushed from this spring, such as the Masters golf tournament. Additionally, advertisers have made commitments to other events later this year.
What you need to know about the novel coronavirus For now, organizers say they will push ahead with the torch relay, which is due to start Thursday in Fukushima in northeastern Japan and is meant to symbolize Japan’s recovery from a 2011 tsunami and nuclear accident in the area. Mori said the prime minister was unsure if he would attend the start of the relay, as the government wanted to discourage crowds forming, although Mori said he himself would attend.
Germany became the latest country on Monday to announce that it would not send athletes to Tokyo this summer. Alfons Hörmann, head of German’s Olympic committee, made the determination Monday, said Michael Schirp, a spokesman for the German team.
Schrip said about 200 German athletes participated in teleconference Saturday evening with the country’s top Olympic officials to voice their concerns. They were given a survey to complete, gauging their willingness to compete this summer. Their feelings were supposed to guide the German response, Schrip said, but after the IOC said Sunday it could take another four weeks before a decision on postponing the Tokyo Games is made, Hörmann decided he had to act sooner.
Hörmann has indicated to the IOC that he hopes a new date in 2021 could be identified and intends to send a more formal notice to Bach after the athletes have all submitted their surveys later this week.
Postponement would be an enormously complicated undertaking, involving serious residual effects on the global sporting calendar and forcing broadcasters to renegotiate with advertisers.
There are also doubts about the availability of some venues, including the Olympic Village, where hundreds of apartments have been sold by a consortium of real estate developers for occupancy after the Games, as well as the need to secure the planned media headquarters at the Tokyo Big Sight, a tightly booked conference center.
For now, organizers say they will push ahead with the torch relay, which is due to start on Thursday in Fukushima in northeastern Japan and is meant to symbolize Japan’s recovery from a 2011 tsunami and nuclear accident in the area. Mori said the prime minister was unsure if he would attend the start of the relay, as the government wanted to discourage crowds forming, although Mori said he himself would attend.
Mori acknowledged the relay route may need to be modified and said organizers were studying how it should be held given the fast-changing situation with the virus.Mori acknowledged the relay route may need to be modified and said organizers were studying how it should be held given the fast-changing situation with the virus.
Tens of thousands of people flocked to a stadium in Sendai north of Tokyo to see the Olympic flame burning in a cauldron over the weekend after it arrived from Greece.Tens of thousands of people flocked to a stadium in Sendai north of Tokyo to see the Olympic flame burning in a cauldron over the weekend after it arrived from Greece.
“We had a turnout nearly 10 times that we had estimated,” Muto said. “We had a turnout nearly 10 times that we had estimated,” Tokyo 2020 CEO Toshiro Muto said.
Muto said organizers should be happy with the turnout “in and of itself” but had placed risk as their top priority and has changed arrangements so people simply passed by the flame without a crowd forming.Muto said organizers should be happy with the turnout “in and of itself” but had placed risk as their top priority and has changed arrangements so people simply passed by the flame without a crowd forming.
Denyer and Akiko Kashiwagi reported from Tokyo. Denyer and Akiko Kashiwagi reported from Tokyo. Ben Strauss contributed from Washington.
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