The Tokyo Olympics have been rescheduled to take place from July 23 to Aug. 8, 2021, and the Paralympic Games will be held Aug. 24 through Sept. 5.
Last week, IOC president Thomas Bach and Japan’s prime minister, Abe Shinzo, announced that the 2020 Games were being postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“A certain amount of time is required for the selection and qualification of athletes and for their training and preparation, and the consensus was that staging the rescheduled Games during the summer vacation in Japan would be preferable,” Mori Yoshirō, president of the Tokyo 2020 Organizing Committee, said in today’s announcement.
The IOC says that all qualified athletes and quota places assigned for the 2020 Tokyo Games will remain unchanged as the Games move to 2021. Postponement of the Olympic Games has created difficult decisions for Tokyo 2020 sponsors. Team USA sponsor and pharmaceutical firm Eli Lilly has asked athletes to repay some of their endorsement fees because of the Olympics’ postponement, according to Sports Business Daily, while Visa is offering its global roster of Olympic athletes to extend their sponsorship agreement into 2021, according to the Associated Press.
