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Decision on Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games to be taken within four weeks as organisers consider postponement


The Olympic Games could be postponed (Picture: REUTERS)

A decision on whether the Olympic Games in Tokyo will take place will be taken within the next four weeks, organisers have confirmed, as the ongoing coronavirus crisis threatens to push the event back until 2021.

The executive board of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) met on Sunday amid pressure from athletes and national Olympic committees calling for the Games to be pushed back from the current 24 July, 2020 start date.

And IOC president Thomas Bach confirmed that decision will be made in the coming weeks but ‘cancellation is not on the agenda’.

‘Human lives take precedence over everything, including the staging of the Games,’ said Bach.

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‘Therefore we have made it our leading principle to safeguard the health of everyone involved, and to contribute to containing the virus.’

British Olympic Association (BOA) chairman Sir Hugh Robertson said: ‘We urge rapid decision-making for the sake of athletes who still face significant uncertainty.

The Olympics could be postponed (Picture: Getty)

‘It simply does not seem appropriate to continue on the present course towards the Olympic Games in the current environment,’ Robertson said.

The international Paralympic Committe ‘fully supports’ the decision to ‘investigate potential scenarios’ and also faces postponement, while Dame Katherine Grainger, chair of UK Sport, said the news was ‘inevitable’

The IOC added in a statement: ‘There is a dramatic increase in cases and new outbreaks of Covid-19 in different countries on different continents.

‘This led the executive board to the conclusion that the IOC needs to take the next step in its scenario-planning.

‘The IOC executive board emphasised that a cancellation of the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 would not solve any of the problems or help anybody.’

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