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Sydney – The postponed Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games will take a stand last year regardless of the coronavirus pandemic, IAF Vice President John Coates told AFP monday, swearing they will be the “games they won. COVID. “
The Olympic Games were never cancelled for reasons other than war and Coates, speaking in an interview, insisted that the Tokyo Games would begin on its revised date.
“This will take a position with COVID,” said Coates, who heads the IAO Coordination Commission for the Tokyo Games. “The games will begin on July 23 next year.
“The games will be, your theme, the Reconstruction Games after the devastation of the tsunami,” he said, referring to a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami that struck the Tohoku region in 2011.
“Now it will be the games that conquered COVID, the soft ones at the end of the tunnel. “
The 2020 Games were postponed in March due to the pandemic.
However, Japan’s borders are still largely closed to foreign visitors and a vaccine is in months or even years, fueling the hypothesis about the option of hosting the Olympic Games.
Japanese officials have made it clear that the parties will be delayed for a moment.
There are signs that public enthusiasm in Japan is waning after a recent vote found that only 1 in four Japanese were looking for next year’s Olympic Games, with maximum postponement or cancellation of support.
Coates said Japanese leaders “did not withdraw the witness at all” after the postponement, despite the “monumental task” of delaying the occasion for a year.
“Before COVID, (the IIC president) Thomas Bach said those are the smart games we’ve seen, the venues were almost all finished, now they’re finished, the town is amazing, all the shipping arrangements, everything’s fine,” he said. Said.
“Now a year has been postponed, it is a monumental task in terms of securing all sites . . . like 43 hotels we had to get out of those contracts and renegotiate a year later.
“The sponsorships had to last up to a year, broadcasting rights. “
With much of these paintings underway or completed, a runners’ organization has been created to read about the other scenarios in 2021: how border controls will affect the movement of athletes, whether enthusiasts can fill the venues and how to ensure stadium safety.
The group, made up of Japanese and the IIC, met for the first time last week.
“Your task now is to take a look at all the other countermeasures that will be needed for the games to take place,” said Coates, long-time chairman of the Australian Olympic Committee.
“Some countries will dominate it (COVID), others will not. Then we’ll have athletes from places where he is and others where he’s not.
“There are 206Array . . . so there’s a huge task on the Japanese side. “
On Friday, Tokyo 2020 CEO Toshiro Muto said organizers were expecting games without spectators, a fear given that Japan still imposes limits on the number of enthusiasts who can attend sporting events.
Japan has already invested billions of dollars in the Olympics, and the delay has increased the cost.
Coates said the IOC was meeting its component by investing “something like another $ 800 million for foreign federations, whose revenue is not being generated this year, and the national Olympic committees. “
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