{"id":22063,"date":"2020-03-24T07:58:42","date_gmt":"2020-03-24T13:58:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vaildaily.com\/?p=475443"},"modified":"2020-03-24T10:35:37","modified_gmt":"2020-03-24T16:35:37","slug":"2020-tokyo-olympic-games-officially-postponed-until-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/local-news\/2020-tokyo-olympic-games-officially-postponed-until-2021\/","title":{"rendered":"2020 Tokyo Olympic Games officially postponed until 2021"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Olympic Rings are displayed at the entrance of the IOC, International Olympic Committee headquarters during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Lausanne, Switzerland, Tuesday, March 24, 2020. (Jean-Christophe Bott\/Keystone via AP)<\/strong>
Switzerland Olympics<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

TOKYO \u2014 The Tokyo Olympics were postponed until 2021 on Tuesday, ending weeks of speculation that the games could not go ahead as scheduled because of the coronavirus pandemic.<\/p>\n

The International Olympic Committee made the decision after speaking with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and local organizers.<\/p>\n

The IOC said the games will be held \u201cnot later than summer 2021\u201d but they will still be called the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the present circumstances and based on the information provided by the WHO today, the IOC President and the Prime Minister of Japan have concluded that the Games of the XXXII Olympiad in Tokyo must be rescheduled to a date beyond 2020 but not later than summer 2021, to safeguard the health of the athletes, everybody involved in the Olympic Games and the international community,\u201d the IOC said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Before the official announcement, Abe said Bach had agreed with his proposal for a one-year postponement.<\/p>\n

\u201cPresident Bach said he will agree \u2018100%,\u2019 and we agreed to hold the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics in the summer of 2021 at the latest,\u201d Abe said, saying holding the games next year would be \u201cproof of a victory by human beings against the coronavirus infections.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Sunday, Bach said a decision on postponing the games would be made in the next four weeks. But pressure grew as national federations, sports governing bodies and athletes spoke out against having the opening ceremony as planned on July 24.<\/p>\n

The decision came only a few hours after local organizers said the torch relay would start as planned on Thursday. It was expected to start in northeastern Fukushima prefecture, but with no torch, no torchbearers and no public. Those plans also changed.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the time being, the flame will be stored and displayed in Fukushima,\u201d organizing committee president Yoshiro Mori said.<\/p>\n

The Olympics have never before been postponed, and have only ever previously been canceled in wartime.<\/p>\n

Organizers will now have to figure out how to keep things running for another year, while making sure venues are up to date for possible another 12 months.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot can happen in one year, so we have to think about what we have to do,\u201d said Toshiro Muto, the CEO of the organizing committee. \u201cThe decision came upon us all of a sudden.\u201d<\/p>\n

The IOC and Tokyo organizers said they hope the decision to postpone will help the world heal from the pandemic.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe leaders agreed that the Olympic Games in Tokyo could stand as a beacon of hope to the world during these troubled times and that the Olympic flame could become the light at the end of the tunnel in which the world finds itself at present,\u201d the IOC statement said. \u201cTherefore, it was agreed that the Olympic flame will stay in Japan. It was also agreed that the Games will keep the name Olympic and Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Olympic Rings are displayed at the entrance of the IOC, International Olympic Committee headquarters during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Lausanne, Switzerland, Tuesday, March 24, 2020. (Jean-Christophe Bott\/Keystone via AP)Switzerland Olympics TOKYO \u2014 The Tokyo Olympics were postponed until 2021 on Tuesday, ending weeks of speculation that the games could not go ahead […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22064,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-22063","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-19 14:56:47","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KRKY Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22063"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22063\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22066,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22063\/revisions\/22066"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}