Covid-19 knocks off Tokyo 2020 Olympics, Games now for 2021

Harry Awurumibe with agency report

Apparently bowing to heavy global pressure and rising athlete dissent, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and Japanese officials sharply reversed course today (Tuesday) and agreed that the 2020 Olympics and Paralympics Games will not take place this summer in Tokyo in the wake of the growing novel coronavirus pandemic.

  Organizers say they now hope to stage the Games in Tokyo by the summer of 2021.

The Olympics are the biggest event to date scuttled because of the virus, which has now claimed at least 17,241 lives, infected more than 395,000 people on six of the seven continents of the world and have upended daily life across the globe.

   Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Tuesday proposed a one-year postponement to IOC leadership, including President Thomas Bach. The IOC quickly agreed that the Games would be held about one year after the previously scheduled start date of July 24.

  “I have made a proposal of about a year,” Abe said. “President Bach said he agreed 100 percent, and we agreed to hold the Olympics by summer 2021.”

Abe said he and Bach agreed “to cooperate in order to hold the Olympics in the complete form, as a testament to victory over the infection.”

    In a joint statement, the IOC and Japan’s Olympic organizing committee said they made the decision “to safeguard the health of the athletes, everybody involved in the Olympic Games and the international community.” Athletes across the world had been calling for the Olympics to be postponed, saying the lack of a decision forced them to continue training at risk to their physical and mental well-being.

  The Olympic flame will remain in Japan, and the Olympics still will be labeled Tokyo 2020, even though they will take place in 2021.

   “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 statement said.

    Abe called Bach on Tuesday night in Japan to offer his plan. The proposal came a day after the United States joined a global chorus of Olympic governing bodies advocating for a postponement. Some of the countries had vowed not to send athletes if the Games began in July as scheduled.

   The Olympic flame will remain in Japan, and the Olympics still will be labeled Tokyo 2020, even though they will take place in 2021.

   “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 statement said.

  Meanwhile, the Nigerian Olympics Committee ( NOC) has yet to make any statement on the new development even as some of the Nigerian athletes are in different places across the world preparing for Tokyo 2020 Olympics which has now been postponed by one year.