International Olympic Committee member Dick Pound announced the schedule 2020 Tokyo Olympics are being postponed.
Pound told USA Today on Monday that the Games likely will be pushed back to 2021 due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, with the details still to be worked out.
“On the basis of the information the IOC has, postponement has been decided,” he told the newspaper in a phone interview. “The parameters going forward have not been determined, but the Games are not going to start on July 24, that much I know.”
The IOC executive board announced Sunday it would take four weeks to assess the impact of the pandemic COVID-19. It also issued a response to Pound’s comments regarding the Tokyo Olympics’ being postponed.
“It’s the right of every IOC member to interpret the decision of the IOC EB, which was announced (Sunday),” read the statement, per ESPN.
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2020 Tokyo Olympics schedule postponed to 2021-IOC member
Several countries, including Canada, Australia, Germany, Portugal, and Norway, have called for a postponement.
Pound thinks the IOC will announce its next steps soon. He was a Canadian IOC member since 1978.
“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.”
The 2020 Summer Olympics, officially the Games of the XXXII Olympiad[d] and commonly known as Tokyo 2020, is an upcoming international multi-sport event initially scheduled to take place from 24 July to 9 August 2020 in Tokyo, Japan, with preliminary events in some sports beginning on 22 July.
As of this writing, Japan recorded 1,128 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 27 fatalities.