The new date for the Games, postponed for a year in response to the coronavirus pandemic, gives athletes time to recalibrate their training schedules. After weeks of uncertainty around having the Summer Olympics and when, organizers of the event on Monday provided some clarity: The Games in Tokyo will start July 23, 2021, almost exactly a year later than originally scheduled. For the 11,000 athletes and multitudes of others who have built lives, careers and businesses around the Games, the new date sets off more than a year of upheaval and complex planning, unprecedented for an event that has been canceled only three times during war and never previously moved to a new date. Nearly a week after Olympic officials and Japanese organizers bowed to widespread pressure and announced they would postpone, Tokyo 2020 organizers gave the new time frame, with an opening ceremony July 23 and the closing one Aug.
8. The Paralympic Games, which were supposed to start Aug. 25, will now take place in 2021 from Aug. 24 to Sept.
5. Thomas Bach, the president of the International Olympic Committee, told sports federations on a conference call before the announcement that the date was picked to give organizers the maximum time to deal with the fallout from the coronavirus. When he called for a show of support on the call, it was unanimous. “I am confident that, working together with the Tokyo 2020 organizing committee, the Tokyo metropolitan government, the Japanese government and all our stakeholders, we can master this unprecedented challenge,” Bach said in a statement Monday.
Bach made official what The New York Times and other news organizations had reported over the weekend. The decision quickly reverberated across oceans, with athletes, coaches, national Olympic committees, sponsors and television partners scrambling to figure out how to grapple with the delay. For Kate Nye, 21, an American weight lifter, the delay means graduating from college and deferring graduate school for another year in order to continue punishing sets with the barbells and weight blocks in the garage of her Michigan home. Still, that was preferable to having no Games, which many athletes feared might happen until Bach promised four days before the postponement that the Games would take place..
“It’s a little bit longer of a delay than I had hoped, but I’m just thankful they were able to successfully postpone the event,” Nye said. The Tokyo 2020 organizing committee, which for years had planned for an opening ceremony July 24 this summer, on Monday announced measures aimed at reducing some of the disruption. It said that the thousands of volunteers who had been offered positions would be retained for next year and that tickets remained valid, but full refunds would be given to those who could no longer attend. Organizers considered alternative dates, but having the event as close to the original time quickly emerged as the preference among officials in Japan and elsewhere.
Denise Rife scored 111 points in an Iowa high school game, was drafted by the Warriors in 1969 and appeared on “The Tonight Show.” She needs a second hip replac...
Michael Lynch, a former director of global sponsorships for Visa who works with a number of Olympic partners, said a one-year delay that avoids conflict with most of Europe’s and North America’s major professional leagues was the best alternative. It also allows major Olympic sponsors, such as the Coca-Cola Company and Procter & Gamble, to reduce their expenses this year and delay them to when the economy presumably would have recovered from any broad downturn. The date is also likely to suit NBCUniversal, the Olympics broadcaster in the United States whose rights fees make up more of the I. O.
C. ’s income than any other single entity. The decision also means the Games will take place during the hottest time of the year in Tokyo, an issue that was causing worry and complications before the coronavirus outbreak became an issue. The Olympic marathon was moved to Sapporo, a cooler city in the north, and organizers had planned several measures to try to keep fans and competitors cool.
Some federations — including those representing swimming, table tennis, equestrian and triathlon — expressed a preference to the I. O. C.
“for having the Games in the spring.”
But most remained neutral or called for keeping the Games in the summer. Perhaps the most notable backer for maintaining a summer schedule was track and field, even though the new date for the Olympics means its world championships, set to open in August 2021, will have to be rearranged. The I. O.
C. especially wanted to steer clear of soccer championships in Europe and South America, which usually take place in June and are being moved to 2021. The I. O.
C. ’s initial indecision and slow action in the face of the spreading outbreak led to criticism from scientists in the United States and Europe as well as athletes, whose training schedules were obliterated by government-imposed restrictions on movement. Most major sports had paused their competitions and many facilities had closed before Olympic organizers acted on the inevitable. Even those who could continue to train had expressed concerns that the absence of a firm start date meant they could not calibrate their schedules, to ensure they were at their peak during the Games.
David Marsh, an elite swim coach based in San Diego who had lobbied for a one-year delay as the coronavirus crisis hit California, said he had athletes rounding into top form who needed to reset and others who would benefit from an extra year of development, during which a marginal improvement could land them on the medal podium. He also has swimmers who now will have to contemplate retirement because they have put off careers outside the pool for so long. “Will sponsors be ready to support Olympic athletes? ” Marsh asked.
“Will parents of swimmers have the ability to support their athlete with Olympic ambitions? ” Marsh now has to find a pool to train his team for another year, which will cost roughly $100,000. The cost of the delay will be felt most sharply in Japan. Local organizers have described the cost of rescheduling what had already been called the Recovery Olympics — a reference to the rebuilding effort after a deadly earthquake and tsunami in 2011 that damaged a nuclear reactor in Fukushima — as “enormous.
” Estimates vary, but none put the extra cost to Japan at less than $2 billion. Like previous Olympics, the actual cost of organizing and executing the Tokyo Games will be much higher than the budget Tokyo first presented. The 2020 organizers say they are spending $12. 6 billion to stage the Games, while a government audit report published last year said the actual cost was several billions more because of the construction of secondary infrastructure.
For Japan, the Olympics has been a national project, one which domestic companies have supported in amounts unmatched by any previous Olympics. The national sponsorship program had brought in more than $3 billion in sponsorship revenue, three times more than at any previous Olympics. Masa Takaya, a spokesman for the organizers, said they had not yet started discussing the costs of the delay with sponsors, but hoped they could count on their continued backing. “We appreciate if sponsors extend the contract terms and keep supporting us,” Takaya said.
The traditional July-August date means the I. O. C. will probably be able to call on the presence of top players from soccer, tennis and golf, some of the biggest names in global sports and a big attraction for television audiences.
Now that the date has been set, the next challenge will be to reorganize the qualifying competitions. Bach said athletes who have already qualified would be guaranteed a place for 2021.
The Day in (no) sports New Orleans Saints Coach Sean Payton shared his favorite plays on Twitter, alternative brackets are still getting busted and a Swedish so...
It is already difficult for the lowest events on the men’s and women’s tours, even in a good economy. Now, the upending of the sports calendar by the coronaviru...
