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International Olympic Committee chief Thomas Bach stated Monday he’s now “very, very confident” that spectators will be capable to attend subsequent yr’s pandemic-postponed Tokyo Olympic Games. Speaking after assembly Japan’s Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga in Tokyo, Bach praised coronavirus countermeasures being ready by organisers and authorities officers. “We are putting really a huge tool box together in which we will put all the different measures we can imagine,” he stated. “Next year… we will be able to take (the) right tools out of this tool box and apply them in order to ensure safe environment for all participants in the games.”
“This makes us all very, very confident that we can have spectators in the Olympic stadia next year,” Bach stated.
The Olympic chief additionally pledged that the IOC would “undertake great efforts” to verify as many members and spectators as potential are vaccinated earlier than arriving in Japan, if a vaccine is on the market by subsequent summer time.
Bach is in Tokyo for a two-day go to seen as supposed to bolster confidence amongst athletes, Japanese residents and Olympic sponsors in regards to the prospects for the primary Games postponed outdoors of wartime.
Spiralling coronavirus infections throughout a lot of the world, and renewed lockdowns, have as soon as once more raised questions on whether or not the Games can actually be held subsequent yr if the pandemic shouldn’t be beneath management.
Japan’s public stays sceptical, and greater than 60 per cent of home sponsors have but to decide to extending their contracts for an additional yr, native media reported this weekend.
But there are glimmers of hope for organisers and Japanese officers, who’ve insisted an additional delay shouldn’t be on the desk, and that cancellation shouldn’t be being mentioned.
News final week of constructive ends in a late-stage vaccine trial had been welcomed by Tokyo 2020 officers as a “relief”.
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And Tokyo this month efficiently staged a four-nation gymnastics competitors, its first worldwide sporting occasion through the pandemic, hailed as proof the Games are potential.
Japan’s authorities has continued to insist the Games will go forward, with Suga reiterating Monday that they’d serve “as proof that mankind overcame the virus”.
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