- In an interview with BBC, IOC president Thomas Bach announced that the Olympic Games will not be postponed again if the coronavirus prevents them from happening in 2021.
- Master the Half Games begin in July 2021, Olympics organizers face the tremendous task of planning a safe event for athletes and spectators.
When the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Tokyo 2020 organizing committee announced two months ago that the 2020 Olympic Games were officially postponed until 2021, the running community breathed a collective sigh of relief. The Games being postponed was much better than a complete cancellation.
But as the coronavirus continues to impact the lives of people around the world, organizers are facing a monumental task: planning for a Games that might occur while COVID-19 is still considered a global pandemic. In an interview with BBC, IOC president Thomas Bach discussed the many hurdles that the event staff will face in the months ahead.
“It’s a mammoth task, and there’s no blueprint for it,” Bach told BBC. “We have to reinvent the wheel day-by-day with everything we are doing.”
And if the IOC and the Tokyo Olympics organizers cannot plan a safe Olympics for next summer, there will be no further postponements to the Games. After discussions with Japanese prime minister Shinzō Abe, the IOC and the organizers agreed that “summer 2021 is the last option” to host the Games, Bach said in the interview.
Bach explained that the high cost of reorganizing the Games would be impossible to repeat a second time. Organizing the Games requires a staff of between 3,000 to 5,000 people, and it would be too expensive to continue employing that roster for another year, he said. Additionally, disrupting athletes’ schedules again by pushing back the Olympics a second time would wreak havoc on future training cycles Why You Shouldnt Run When You Have COVID-19.
“You cannot have the athletes being in uncertainty. You can not have so much overlapping with the future Olympics,” Bach said.
As of now, with the rescheduled Olympics still more than a year away, the IOC is still fully committed to having the Games start as planned in July 2021. However, the Games might look different, depending on the regulations enforced by the Tokyo organizing committee and health authorities. Bach mentioned that there might be facilities to quarantine athletes and other participants within the Olympic Village, but he didn’t discuss any further safety protocols, such as virus testing for athletes and spectators.
“When we have a clearer view of how the world will look like in July 2021, then we’ll make the appropriate decisions,” Bach said.
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