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Tokyo 2020 needs to be held subsequent 12 months “at any cost” given athletes’ efforts to be prepared, Japan’s Olympic minister mentioned Tuesday, a day after the IOC’s John Coates instructed AFP that the postponed Games would go forward in 2021 “with or without Covid”. “For the Games next year, athletes are continuing to work hard in the environments they find themselves in. So I feel we have to hold it at any cost,” Seiko Hashimoto mentioned when requested about International Olympic Committee vice-president Coates’s remarks.
“I think Mr Coates felt reassured that the Tokyo Games can be held with further close coordination of efforts,” she added.
Coates on Monday instructed AFP in an unique interview that he was assured the delayed Games would open as deliberate subsequent 12 months, vowing they would be the “Games that conquered Covid”.
“It will happen with or with out Covid. The Games will begin on July 23 subsequent 12 months,” mentioned Coates, who heads the IOC’s Coordination Commission for the Tokyo Games.
“The Games were going to be, their theme, the Reconstruction Games after the devastation of the tsunami,” he mentioned, referring to the catastrophic 2011 earthquake and tsunami in northeastern Japan.
“Now very much these will be the Games that conquered Covid, the light at the end of the tunnel.”
A spokesman for the Tokyo 2020 organisers declined to remark straight on whether or not they agreed with Coates’s assured evaluation.
But Masa Takaya mentioned the remarks confirmed “that the IOC team is fully committed to delivering the Games next year”.
In a landmark resolution, the 2020 Olympics have been postponed due to the coronavirus, and they’re now set to open on July 23, 2021.
But Japan’s borders are nonetheless largely closed to overseas guests and a vaccine is months and even years away, feeding hypothesis about whether or not the Games are possible in any respect.
Officials have made clear that one other delay wouldn’t be potential, and there are indicators that public enthusiasm in Japan is waning.
A ballot this summer season discovered only one in 4 Japanese need them to go forward subsequent 12 months, with most backing both one other postponement or a cancellation.
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A taskforce together with organisers and Japanese authorities officers that can develop coronavirus countermeasures met for the primary time this week.
Takaya mentioned the organisers would proceed “carefully monitoring” the pandemic’s evolution and “make every effort in coordination with all relevant organisations to ensure a safe and secure Games”.
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