This article is from the source 'washpo' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/tokyo-olympics-officially-postponed-until-2021/2020/03/24/8a93080a-6dd0-11ea-a156-0048b62cdb51_story.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=wp_world

The article has changed 6 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 1 Version 2
Tokyo Olympics officially postponed until 2021 On hold: Tokyo Olympics postponed to 2021
(about 4 hours later)
TOKYO — The Tokyo Olympics were postponed until 2021 on Tuesday, ending weeks of speculation that the games could not go ahead as scheduled because of the coronavirus pandemic. TOKYO — The IOC announced a first-of-its-kind postponement of the Summer Olympics on Tuesday, bowing to the realities of a coronavirus pandemic that is shutting down daily life around the globe and making planning for a massive worldwide gathering in July a virtual impossibility.
The International Olympic Committee made the decision after speaking with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and local organizers. The International Olympic Committee said the Tokyo Games “must be rescheduled to a date beyond 2020, but not later than summer 2021, to safeguard the health of the athletes, everybody involved in the Olympic Games and the international community.”
The IOC said the games will be held “not later than summer 2021” but they will still be called the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. It was an announcement seen as all but a certainty as pressure mounted from nervous athletes, sports organizations and national Olympic committees — all forced to deal with training and qualifying schedules, to say nothing of international anti-doping protocols, that have been ruptured beyond repair.
“In the present circumstances and based on the information provided by the WHO today, the IOC President and the Prime Minister of Japan have concluded that the Games of the XXXII Olympiad in Tokyo must be rescheduled to a date beyond 2020 but not later than summer 2021, to safeguard the health of the athletes, everybody involved in the Olympic Games and the international community,” the IOC said in a statement. Four-time Olympic hockey champion Hayley Wickenheiser, the first IOC member to criticize the body’s reluctance to postpone, called it the “message athletes deserved to hear.”
Before the official announcement, Abe said Bach had agreed with his proposal for a one-year postponement. “To all the athletes: take a breath, regroup, take care of yourself and your families. Your time will come,” she wrote on Twitter.
“President Bach said he will agree ‘100%,’ and we agreed to hold the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics in the summer of 2021 at the latest,” Abe said, saying holding the games next year would be “proof of a victory by human beings against the coronavirus infections.” IOC President Thomas Bach and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe spoke via phone Tuesday morning, and they, along with a handful of executives from the IOC and Japan’s organizing committee, agreed to make the call to delay games that have been reported to cost upward of $28 billion to stage.
On Sunday, Bach said a decision on postponing the games would be made in the next four weeks. But pressure grew as national federations, sports governing bodies and athletes spoke out against having the opening ceremony as planned on July 24. Other Olympics — 1916, 1940 and 1944 — have been canceled because of war, but none have ever been postponed for any reason, let alone a renegade virus that has accounted for more than 375,000 cases worldwide, with numbers growing exponentially. The Tokyo Games would still be called the 2020 Olympics, even though they will be held in 2021 — the first time the games will be held in an odd-numbered year since the modern era began in 1896.
Four-time Olympic hockey champion Hayley Wickenheiser was the first IOC member to break ranks with Bach’s stance that the games would go ahead as planned when she publicly criticized the body’s unwavering strategy. “The leaders agreed that the Olympic Games in Tokyo could stand as a beacon of hope,” the IOC said in a statement.
After the announcement to postpone the game, she wrote on Twitter that the decision was the “message athletes deserved to hear.” The decision offers a sense of relief for the 11,000 or so potential Olympians from more than 200 countries, who no longer have to press forward with training under near-impossible conditions, unsure of when, exactly, they need to be ready — and for what.
“To all the athletes: take a breath, regroup, take care of yourself and your families. Your time will come,” she wrote. “Thankful to finally have some clarity regarding The Olympic Games. A huge decision but I think the right one for sure,” British sprinter Adam Gemili said on Twitter. “Time to regain, look after each other during this difficult period and go again when the time is right!”
The decision came only a few hours after local organizers said the torch relay would start as planned on Thursday. It was expected to start in northeastern Fukushima prefecture, but with no torch, no torchbearers and no public. Those plans also changed. One reason the IOC took longer to make the decision was because it wanted to figure out logistics. It will be a daunting challenge. Many of the arenas, stadiums and hotels are under contract for a games held from July 24 to August 9. Remaking those arrangements is doable, but will come at a cost. There are also considerations beyond the price tag. Among them: The $1 billion-plus the IOC was to receive from NBC, the millions in smaller athlete endorsement contracts that are now in limbo, the budgets of the individual national Olympic committees, to name a few.
“For the time being, the flame will be stored and displayed in Fukushima,” organizing committee president Yoshiro Mori said. There’s also the matter of the international sports schedule. Nearly all 33 sports on the Olympic program have key events, including world championships, on the docket for 2021. Perhaps the best example of what a disruption this can cause would come from track. Famous Hayward Field at University of Oregon was rebuild and expanded at the cost of $200 million to hold next year’s world championships. Now that event will likely be postponed.
The Olympics have never before been postponed, and have only ever previously been canceled in wartime. “There are a lot of pieces of a huge and very difficult jigsaw puzzle,” Bach said.
Organizers will now have to figure out how to keep things running for another year, while making sure venues are up to date for possible another 12 months. But for weeks, it was becoming increasingly clear that pressing on with a July 24 starting date was no longer a choice.
“A lot can happen in one year, so we have to think about what we have to do,” said Toshiro Muto, the CEO of the organizing committee. “The decision came upon us all of a sudden.” Just about every sport across the globe has suspended play in the wake of the pandemic. The worldwide economy is faltering and people are increasingly being told it’s not safe to congregate in large groups or, in some cases, even to leave their homes. Gyms are closed across America. Holding Olympic trials in a matter of months was becoming untenable.
The IOC and Tokyo organizers said they hope the decision to postpone will help the world heal from the pandemic. Olympic committees in Canada and Australia were saying they either would not, or could not, send a team to Tokyo in July. World Athletics and the three biggest sports in the United States — swimming, track and gymnastics — were calling for a postponement.
“The leaders agreed that the Olympic Games in Tokyo could stand as a beacon of hope to the world during these troubled times and that the Olympic flame could become the light at the end of the tunnel in which the world finds itself at present,” the IOC statement said. “Therefore, it was agreed that the Olympic flame will stay in Japan. It was also agreed that the Games will keep the name Olympic and Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020.” As recently as Sunday, the IOC was saying it would take up to four weeks to reach a decision. Four weeks ended up being two days.
The decision came only a few hours after local organizers said the torch relay would start as planned on Thursday. It was expected to start in northeastern Fukushima prefecture, but with no torch, no torchbearers and no public.
Those plans also changed.
The flame will be stored and displayed in Fukushima. Like everything else in the Olympic world, its next move will be determined at a later date.
“I’m thrilled for the athletes,’ Bob Bowman, who used to coach Michael Phelps and now works with other Olympic hopefuls, told The Associated Press. “That’s what this is all about at the end of the day, and really the world that gets to share in their journey and be a part of it. Now we can have a real Olympics that is healthy and fair.”
___
Wade and Yamaguchi reported from Tokyo; Pells reported from Denver. Also contributing: Paul Newberry in Atlanta and Graham Dunbar in Geneva.
______
More AP sports: https://apnews.com/apf-sports and https://twitter.com/AP_SportsMore AP sports: https://apnews.com/apf-sports and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.