New Tokyo Olympics Dates Confirmed for 2021 (UPDATE)
The games will still be called Tokyo 2020.
UPDATE (March 30, 2020): Following news that the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo were set to be delayed, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has now announced the dates for the rescheduled event. The games — which will still be called Tokyo 2020 — will now begin on July 23 2021, and will run until August 8. The Paralympic Games will now begin on August 24 2021 and finish on September 5.
Announcing the decision, IOC president Thomas Bach said, “I am confident that, working together with the Tokyo 2020 Organising Committee, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, the Japanese Government and all our stakeholders, we can master this unprecedented challenge. Humankind currently finds itself in a dark tunnel. These Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 can be a light at the end of this tunnel.”
ORIGINAL STORY (March 24, 2020): After Canada and Australia both announced that they were withdrawing from the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, it has now been confirmed that the games are set to be postponed. The announcement comes after a conference call between Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Tokyo governor Yuriko Koike and International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach.
Abe and Koike proposed a one-year postponement to the IOC, with Abe then saying that Bach had agreed “100%” with the proposal to delay the games. With Bach’s support, the postponement is now a formality, although a final decision will still have to be approved by the IOC’s Executive Board. This is the first time that the Olympics have ever been postponed, with the modern games only cancelled during wartime.
The latest development about the Olympics comes exactly a week after the IOC announced that it had no plans to cancel the event.
In other sports news, Formula 1 launched the eSports Virtual Grand Prix series due to coronavirus suspension.
