Tokyo 2020: Olympics Will Go Ahead 'With Or Without Covid': IOC Chief

Tokyo 2020: Olympics Will Go Ahead 'With Or Without Covid': IOC Chief

By Amina Nwokedi

Tokyo's postponed Olympics will go ahead next year regardless of the coronavirus pandemic, IOC vice-president John Coates said on Monday, vowing they will be the "Games that conquered Covid".

The Olympics have never been cancelled outside of the world wars and Coates, speaking in an exclusive interview, was adamant that the Tokyo Games will start on their revised date.

"It will take place with or without Covid. The Games will start on July 23 next year," said Coates, who heads the International Olympic Committee's Coordination Commission for the Tokyo Games.

"The Games were going to be, their theme, the Reconstruction Games after the devastation of the tsunami," he said, referring to a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami in northeastern Japan in 2011.

"Now very much these will be the Games that conquered Covid, the light at the end of the tunnel."

In a landmark decision, the 2020 Olympics were postponed because of the global march of the pandemic and they are now set to open on July 23, 2021.

But Japan's borders are still largely closed to foreign visitors and a vaccine is months or even years away, feeding speculation about whether the Games are feasible at all.

Japanese officials have made clear they would not delay them a second time beyond 2021.

There are signs that public enthusiasm in Japan is waning after a recent poll found just one in four Japanese want them to go ahead next year, with most backing either another postponement or a cancellation.