SUMMER Olympic and Paralympic Games postponed till 2021 because of coronavirus

The 2020 Tokyo Olympics scheduled from July 24 to August 9 and Paralympics slated from 25/08/2020 to 06/09/2020 have been postponed because of the COVID-19 and requests of several nations including Canada and The United Kingdom and POTUS Donald Trump. International Paralympic Committee president Andrew Parsons said the postponement was “the only logical option”. Opinion polls taken before the announcement indicated that the Japanese public had already accepted that Tokyo 2020 would be sport’s biggest victims of the coronavirus pandemic. According to a Kyodo News poll last week, almost 70% of respondents said they did not expect the Games to go ahead this summer, reports The Guardian. The announcement about the postponement of world’s greatest sporting events has been taken over telephone discussions between IOC president Thomas Bach and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Abe said Bach was in “100 percent agreement” when Japan asked the IOC to push back the Games. In a joint statement, they said that based on current World Health Organization information, the Tokyo Games “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”. “The 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. Therefore, 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,” the statement added. The city of Tokyo had won widespread praise for readying the venues ahead of the deadline and tickets massively oversubscribed. British Olympic Association chief executive Andy Anson said: “It would have been unthinkable for us to continue to prepare for an Olympic Games at a time the nation and the world no less is enduring great hardship. Deferment is the right decision.’’ British Paralympics Association chief executive Mike Sharrock said: “Stemming this global public health crisis and doing everything possible to safeguard the health and wellbeing of people should clearly take priority in these unprecedented times. “We welcome the clarity this now gives Paralympic athletes throughout the world who have had their training and qualification plans severely disrupted.”  (edited by @ chakravartypk with image courtesy to CNet)