The summer Olympics games was to begin in Tokyo this July but has been rescheduled for July 2021,almost exactly one year later.
“The Olympics Games Tokyo 2020 will be celebrated from 23 July to 8 August 2021″, the IOC said on Monday. The games were postponed last week due to the Covid-19 pandemic. It has equally been added that the Paralympics Games will follow,running from August 24 to September 5.
This information is coming through after weeks of uncertainty about having the summer Olympics Games. This gives athletes time to recalibrate their training schedule.
The are about 11,000 athletes competing in the summer Olympics Games as well as a multitude of others whose lives have been built around the Olympics.
“I am confident that,working together with the Tokyo 2020 organizing committee,the Tokyo metropolitan government,the Japanese government and all our stakeholders,we can master this”unprecedented challenge”, Thomas Bach said on Monday.
Thomas Bach is the current president of the International Olympics committee, he told sports federation on a conference call before the announcement that the date was picked to give maximum amount of time to the organizers in order to be able to deal with the Corona virus.
An American weight lifter Kate Nye,said that the delay means her graduating from college and having to defer graduate school for another year. But still,it is preferable to having no Games at all which many athletes feared might happen until Bach confirmed the Games will take place.
The Olympics Games will still hold in Japan until the postponed games are held.
Thousands of volunteers who had been offered positions would be would be retained for next year and all tickets still remain valid,but full refunds will be given to those who can no longer attend. The Tokyo 2020 organizing committee which has been planning the ceremony for years and was planning to open June 24 this summer announced on Monday the above measures directed at reducing disruption. Optional dates were considered but having the event as close to the original time was a preference amongst the officials in Japan.
The postponement of the Olympic Games will also allow important sponsors,such as Procter&Gamble and Coca Cola company the time to reduce their expenses this year and equally delay them to when the economy must have recovered from any down turn.
A former director of global sponsorships for visa Michael Lynch,who works with a number of Olympic partners,said a one year delay that avoids conflict with most of Europe’s and North America’s professional leagues was the best alternative. The decision which also means the games which also means the games will take time during the hottest part of the year in Tokyo,was causing before Corona virus became the issue. The games was moved to a cooler city in the North,called Sapporo and organizers have planned other ways to keep people cool.
An elite swimming coach based on San Diego, David Marsh,who has lobbied for a year delay as the Corona virus crisis hit California said he had athletes rounding in to top form who needed to reset as well as others who will benefit from an extra year of development.
Local organizers have described the cost of rescheduling what had already been called the Recovery Olympics. The cost of delay will be felt the most in Japan.
The Olympics has been a national project for Japan in which domestic companies have supported. The national sponsorship program had bought in more than 3 million dollars in sponsorship revenue,three times more than at any previous Olympics. The 2020 organizers said they are spending 12.6 billion to stage the games.
This is the first time the Olympics Games have been postponed,the games has been suspended three times because of World war 1 and World war 2. Now that the date has been set,the new challenge will be how to reorganize the qualifying competitions.
