The Olympic committee has officially postponed the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic games due to the coronavirus pandemic; The estimated future date is no later than the Summer of 2021.
Yesterday, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and individuals involved with organizing the event for 2020 in Tokyo released a joint statement that confirmed the postponement of the 2020 Olympic games.
The statement read, “The unprecedented and unpredictable spread of the outbreak has seen the situation in the rest of the world deteriorating…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.”
The announcement comes amid the pandemic of the coronavirus that has thrown a massive diplomatic & economic curveball the world over the last 2 months.
Prior to 2020, the Olympic games had been cancelled just three other times. These include one occasion during World War I (1916) and two occasions during World War II (1940, 1944). Interestingly enough, the games that were cancelled in 1940 were set to be in Tokyo, Japan.
