Sydney, Australia, September 8, 2020: The postponed Tokyo 2020 Olympics will go ahead next year regardless of the coronavirus pandemic, IOC Vice President John Coates said on Monday, September 7.
Coates vowed that it would be the “Games that conquered COVID.”
Coates, who heads the International Olympic Committee’s Coordination Commission for the Tokyo Games, told AFP: “It will take place with or without COVID. The Games will start on July 23 next year.
“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 that struck the Tohoku region in March 2011.
“Now very much these will be the Games that conquered COVID, the light at the end of the tunnel.”
The 2020 Games were postponed in March because of the global pandemic.
“Some countries will have it under control, some won’t. We’ll have athletes therefore coming from places where it’s under control and some where it is not. There’s 206 teams…so there’s a massive task being undertaken on the Japanese side,” Coates added.