Tokyo: The 2020 Tokyo Olympics have been postponed to no later than the summer of 2021 because of the coronavirus pandemic sweeping the globe, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced Tuesday.
The Games were scheduled for July 24-August 9, but after telephonic discussions between IOC president Thomas Bach and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a historic joint decision was taken for the first postponement of an Olympics in peacetime.
Abe said Bach was in ‘100 percent agreement’ when Japan asked the IOC to push back the Games.
In a joint statement, the pair said that based on current World Health Organisation (WHO) information, 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 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.
“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,” the statement concluded.
The decision will be a devastating blow for the city of Tokyo, which had won widespread praise for its organisation, with venues finished well ahead of time and tickets massively oversubscribed.
The Olympics, which has experienced boycotts, terrorist attacks and protests, but has been held every four years since 1948, would be the highest-profile event affected by the virus that has killed thousands and closed sports competitions worldwide.
The IOC has come under increasing pressure in recent days to postpone the Games, with 1.7 billion people across the planet in lockdown to prevent the further spread of COVID-19.
Training has become impossible for many athletes and exposes them to the risk of contracting or spreading the disease. Competitions and qualifiers have been scrapped, while international travel is severely limited.
The IOC had initially given itself Sunday a deadline of four weeks to come up with a proposal to postpone the Games, a Herculean task that touches on every aspect of Tokyo 2020 planning from venues to security to ticketing.
But after Canada and Australia withdrew their teams and the powerful US Olympic Committee and World Athletics also joined the chorus calling for a postponement, the writing was on the wall.
Tokyo was spending some $12.6 billion to host the Games, according to its latest budget, and experts believe a postponement could cost it some $6 billion in the short-term before recouping it when they eventually go ahead.
It will also be a bitter blow to sponsors and major broadcasters who rely on the four-yearly extravaganza for critical advertising revenue.
It is not the first time Tokyo has seen unscheduled changes to the Games – it was due to be the first Asian country to host the Olympics in 1940 before pulling out due to international pressure over its war with China.
The IOC came under fire for taking so long to make its decision after other major events such as the European Football Championships already announced postponements.
But Tokyo 2020 organisers had pointed to the unparalleled complexity – not to mention cost – of shifting the Games. It is not even clear venues will be available and tens of thousands of hotel rooms will need to be cancelled and rebooked.
“It is mind-bogglingly complex to make a sudden change after seven years of preparation for the biggest sporting event in the world,” Michael Payne, the IOC’s former head of marketing, said Tuesday.
Squeezing in the 16-day Games into what will already be a hugely crowded 2021 calendar is another major headache, with arguably the two biggest sports, swimming and athletics, due to hold their World Championships in the same summer.
Tokyo: The Olympic Games has suffered political boycotts (Moscow 1980) and terrorism (Munich 1972), but has only ever been cancelled due to outbreaks of war.
These are the occasions when the Games have been scrapped
Berlin 1916: At the IOC meeting in Stockholm in July 4, 1912, the sixth Olympic Games were awarded to Berlin, with the German capital beating out competition from Alexandria, Amsterdam, Brussels, Budapest and the US city of Cleveland.
Germany pulled out all the stops, opening a stadium with a capacity of around 33,000 in western Berlin’s leafy Grunewald district in 1913 to celebrate 25 years of Kaiser Wilhelm II’s reign as head of the German Reich. The stadium took only 200 days to build, according to the German Olympic Committee (DOSB) and featured a 100-metre-long swimming pool on its northern side.
A two-day test event was held n June 27 and 28, 1914 in the Berlin stadium. On the second day, Archduke Frank Ferdinand of Austria and his wife were assassinated in Sarajevo, starting a chain of events that led to the outbreak of World War I.
It is not clear when the Games fell victim to the war but the founder of the modern Olympics, Pierre de Coubertin, decreed that the Berlin 1916 Games still be counted as the sixth Olympiad, even though they never took place.
Tokyo 1940: In the same way Tokyo 2020 officials have framed the Games as the ‘Recovery Olympics’ after the devastating 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown, Tokyo cast a bid for 1940 as a chance to show it had recovered from a catastrophic earthquake in 1923.
Spearheaded by legendary Japanese figure Jigoro Kano, the founder of judo and the country’s first IOC member, Tokyo was awarded the 1940 Games after ferocious lobbying, including persuading Italian dictator Benito Mussolini to pull out of the race.
The Games were supposed to celebrate the 2,600 years since the enthronement of Japan’s mythical first emperor Jimmu, but they became untenable because of the country’s military aggression in China.
With Japan at war with China from 1937, diplomatic pressure grew for Japan to give up the Games and the military began to question why resources should be diverted from the war effort to fund Olympic construction.
The Japanese Olympic Committee eventually bowed to the inevitable and in 1938 told the IOC it would not be hosting the Games, euphemistically citing the ‘trouble with China’ as the reason.
Tokyo eventually became the first Asian city to host the Olympics in 1964.
London 1944: Despite what British Prime Minister Winston Churchill called the ‘gathering storm’ over Europe due to Nazi Germany, the IOC met in London in July 1939 to decide which city would host the 1944 Olympics. They plumped for London, which beat bids by Rome, Detroit, Lausanne and Athens. But only three months later, Britain had declared war on Germany and the 1944 Games was a non-starter.