The 2020 Olympic Games will be postponed by one year because of coronavirus.
This is according to an International Olympic Committee member named Dick Pound.
The much anticipated global sporting event was scheduled to take place in Tokyo, Japan from Friday 24th July 2020 to Sunday 9th August 2020.
It comes after the chairman of the British Olympic Association said Great Britain would be unlikely to send a team to Tokyo in July.
“On the basis of the information the IOC has, postponement has been decided,” Pound said.
“The parametres going forward have not been determined, but the Games are not going to start on 24 July, that much I know.”
The International Olympic Committee has given itself four weeks to decide on the future of this summer’s Games, but veteran IOC member Pound says a decision will be announced soon.
“It will come in stages,” he said. We will postpone this and begin to deal with all the ramifications of moving this, which are immense.”
Canada and Australia had already announced their decision to withdraw from this summer’s Games when the chairman of the British Olympic Association, Hugh Robertson, said he expected Britain to be “joining shortly”.
Numerous sporting events around the world have been affected. The spread of the novel Coronavirus has led to to the postponement of sporting events like the World Indoor Championships, Grand prix, NBA league, World Rugby Sevens, Euro 2020, La Liga, EPL, MSL and Serie A leagues fixtures.
As of March 23rd 2020, there are over 350,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases, over 16,000 deaths and over 100,000 recoveries.
Update: March 24th 2020
The Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games have been postponed until next year because of the worldwide coronavirus pandemic.
The event, due to begin on 24 July, will now take place “no later than summer 2021”.
“I proposed to postpone for a year and [IOC] president Thomas Bach responded with 100% agreement,” said Shinzo Abe, Japan’s Prime Minister.
The event will still be called Tokyo 2020 despite taking place in 2021.
