The Tokyo Olympics will begin on July 23 next year, organisers said on Monday, after the coronavirus forced the historic decision to postpone the Games until 2021.
“The Olympics will
be held from July 23 to August 8, 2021. The Paralympics will be held from
August 24 to September 5,” Tokyo 2020 chief Yoshiro Mori told reporters at a
hastily arranged news conference.
Only hours earlier,
Mori had said he expected a decision from the International Olympic Committee
(IOC) during the course of the week.
The Tokyo 2020
Olympics were due to open on July 24 this year and run for 16 days, but the
coronavirus pandemic forced the first peace-time postponement of the Games.
The IOC and Japan
had for weeks insisted the show could go on but the rapid spread of COVID-19
prompted growing disquiet among athletes and sporting federations.
The Olympics was
the highest-profile sporting casualty of the coronavirus that has wiped out
fixtures worldwide and all but halted professional sport.
There was some
speculation that Japanese organisers could take advantage of the blank canvas
to shift the Games to spring, avoiding the heat of the Tokyo summer that had
been their main concern before coronavirus struck.
Due to the heat,
the marathon has been moved to Sapporo, a city some 800 kilometres (500 miles)
to the north of Tokyo where the weather is cooler even at the height of summer.
The postponement
has handed organisers the “unprecedented” task of rearranging an event seven
years in the making, and Tokyo 2020 CEO Toshiro Muto has admitted the
additional costs will be “massive”.
According to the
latest budget, the Games were due to cost $12.6 billion, shared between the
organising committee, the government of Japan and Tokyo city.
However, that
number is hotly contested with a much-publicised government audit suggesting
the central government was spending several times that amount—on items
organisers claim are only tangentially related to the Olympics.
‘Mankind’s victory’
The postponement
affects every aspect of the organisation—hotels, ticketing, venues and
transport being among the major headaches.
Hotels have had to
cancel bookings, dealing them a bitter blow at a time when tourism is already
being hammered by the coronavirus.
Some venues that
had booked events years in advance will potentially have to scrap them to make
way for the rescheduled Olympics and there is still uncertainty about whether
ticket-holders will get refunded.
Another thorny
issue is the athletes’ village, which was due to be converted into luxury
apartments after the Games, some of which have already found buyers.
The Japanese
government had touted the Games as the “Recovery Olympics”, designed to show
how the country had bounced back from the 2011 triple disaster of the
earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown in the northeastern Fukushima region.
The Games are now
being billed as the expression of humanity’s triumph over the coronavirus.
“We are embarking
on an unprecedented challenge,” said Mori earlier Monday.
“But I believe it
is the mission of the Tokyo 2020 organising committee to hold the Olympics and
Paralympics next year as a proof of mankind’s victory” against the virus.