The International Olympic Committee (IOC) president and Japanese Prime Minister agreed to postpone the Tokyo Olympics and move it to 2021 due to the notorious COVID-19 outbreak.
The Tokyo 2020 organizing committee and the IOC released a statement, which says, “The IOC president and the Prime Minister of Japan have concluded that the 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.”
The Prime Minister said that he and Bach agreed that the cancellation of the Games was out of the question, as it is the most appropriate response to the coronavirus pandemic.
The Olympic Games and Paralympic Games shall still be called the “Olympic and Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020” despite of its postponement for a year.
In addition, the Olympic Flame shall stay in Japan “as a beacon of hope to the world during these troubled times.”
The International Paralympics Committee president Andrew Parsons said that the decision to delay the Games was “the only logical option.”
Originally, the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games was scheduled from August 25 to September 6.
In a statement, Parson said, “Postponing the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games as a result of the global COVID-19 outbreak is absolutely the right thing to do.”
“The health and well-being of human life must always be our number one priority and staging a sport event of any kind during this pandemic is simply not possible. Sport is not the most important thing right now, preserving human life is.”