The 2020 summer Olympics will be postponed due to coronavirus, says IOC official

The games will most likely be delayed until 2021, with full details to be determined over the next four weeks.

The 2020 Summer Olympics are going to be postponed, reports USA Today. Full details have yet to be announced, but International Olympic Committee member Dick Pound said that the games would most likely be delayed until 2021 and that the IOC would make a final decision over the next four weeks.

The news comes after weeks of back-and-forth between the IOC and the athletic community. The 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo were scheduled to begin on July 24, but multiple athletic groups have called for them to be postponed in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. Even if global travel becomes safe again by July, athletes argued that it’s not currently safe to train at Olympic levels. Athletes in countries affected by coronavirus have limited ability to effectively prepare for a July event, and that means a July Olympics wouldn’t have a level playing field.

The IOC, meanwhile, maintained a “wait-and-see stance,” saying it would be irresponsible to speculate on what the future might hold, but avowed that they would absolutely not cancel the 2020 Olympics. In an interview with the New York Times last Thursday, IOC president Thomas Bach officially refused to set a date by which point he would have made a decision about the future of the 2020 games.

Over the last few days, pressure to postpone the Olympics mounted. The Olympic committees for both Norway and Brazil have issued statements calling for the games to be postponed. On Friday, USA Swimming and USA Track and Field submitted open letters to the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee requesting that the games be postponed for one year. USA Gymnastics sent a survey to its members to determine what its own stance would be.

On Sunday, Bach wrote a letter to the athletic community at last indicating that he might be open to postponing the games and pledging to come to a decision within four weeks. Just hours later, both Canada and Australia responded that they would send no athletes to the 2020 games unless they were postponed one year.

Now, Pound says the 2020 Olympics are absolutely postponed. “On the basis of the information the IOC has, postponement has been decided,” Pound told USA Today. “The parameters going forward have not been determined, but the Games are not going to start on July 24, that much I know.”