Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, has announced that the 2020 Olympic Games will be postponed until next year. This announcement follows his request to postpone the summer games as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
This is the first time in history that the Olympic games have been postponed. In 1916, 1940 and 1944 the games were cancelled due to the two world wars.
The Olympic Games were scheduled for July and August 2020 and were scheduled to be held in Tokyo. The fate of the games have been debated for weeks. The risk of athletes travelling and competing during the pandemic has posed the question of whether the games should be postponed or cancelled.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach were in talks this week about whether the games should be postponed. The agreement was ultimately reached to prolong the event so as to prevent the virus from spreading.
Canada and Australia announced that they were pulling out of the Olympic Games, making them the first nation to do so.
In an official joint statement, the Tokyo 2020 Organising Committee and the IOC said: ‘In 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.’
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