Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games are to be postponed (Picture: AFP via Getty)

The 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games will be postponed, according to veteran International Committe member Dick Pound.

Pound said a decision has already been made to push back the Games, which were due to start on July 24, 2020.

‘On the basis of the information the IOC has, postponement has been decided,’ Pound told USA Today.

‘The parameters going forward have not been determined, but the Games are not going to start on July 24, that much I know.


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‘It will come in stages. We will postpone this and begin to deal with all the ramifications of moving this, which are immense.’



It’s expected the Games will be pushed back until 2021.

The British Olympic Assocation chairman, Hugh Robertson, earlier warned Team GB would follow Canada and Australia’s stance of announcing they will not compete in Japan if the Games were not postponed.

On Sunday, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced that a decision on the Games would be taken in the next four weeks, with the event set to be pushed back to 2021.

And Robertson admitted that Britain would likely pull out ‘shortly’ in similar fashion to Canada and Australia.

The Games will be pushed back (picture: /Getty Images)

‘We can’t see any way that this can go ahead as things are constituted,’ said Robertson. ‘I expect we will be joining Canada and Australia shortly.

‘I think it is very simple. If the virus continues as predicted by the government, I don’t think there is any way we can send a team.

‘First, I don’t see any way that the athletes and Team GB could be ready by then. Elite training facilities are perfectly understandably and quite correctly closed around the country, so there is no way they could undertake the preparation they need to get ready for a Games.

‘Secondly, there is the appropriateness of holding an Olympic Games at a time like this. We are actually in a process where we are talking to all our sports. We will complete that over the next couple of days.

‘We have already said to the IOC (International Olympic Committee) that we think their four-week pause is absolutely the right thing to do.’

Japan has not been as badly affected as some countries across the globe, with 41 deaths confirmed from just over 1,100 cases by the morning of Monday 23 March.

But there has been pressure on the IOC from athletes and national Olympic committees to push back from the current 24 July, 2020 start date amid health risks.

IOC president Thomas Bach confirmed that a decision will be made in the coming weeks but ‘cancellation is not on the agenda’.

The Games have been delayed (Picture: AFP via Getty Images)

‘Human lives take precedence over everything, including the staging of the Games,’ said Bach.

‘Therefore we have made it our leading principle to safeguard the health of everyone involved, and to contribute to containing the virus.’

The IOC added in a statement: ‘There is a dramatic increase in cases and new outbreaks of Covid-19 in different countries on different continents.



‘This led the executive board to the conclusion that the IOC needs to take the next step in its scenario-planning.

‘The IOC executive board emphasised that a cancellation of the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 would not solve any of the problems or help anybody.’

Nic Coward, the chairman of UK Athletics, also called for postponement with athletes struggling to get physically ready for the ‘greatest test’ amid the coronavirus crisis.

‘Athletes and para-athletes have been preparing for the whole of their sporting lives to get themselves in the best possible shape for a day in July or August for the greatest test,’ Coward told the Guardian.

‘But with facilities closing down, their ability to get themselves in the best possible shape is compromised at best. That is creating intense pressure. And I think that intense pressure is what people have to understand is there and release it.

‘The priority now is the health and welfare of individuals and to take the stress out of the system.

‘And that comes by telling the athletes it is not going to take place when they were told – and then for the authorities to take time in deciding when it should be staged in an orderly fashion.’

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