The IOC announced a first-of-its-kind postponement of the Summer Olympics on Tuesday, bowing to the realities of a coronavirus pandemic that is shutting down daily life around the globe and making planning for a massive worldwide gathering in July a virtual impossibility.
The International Olympic Committee said the Tokyo Games must be rescheduled to a date beyond 2020, but not later than summer 2021, to safeguard the health of the athletes, everybody involved in the Olympic Games and the international community.
It was an announcement seen as all but a certainty as pressure mounted from nervous athletes, sports organizations and national Olympic committees all confronting the reality that training and qualifying schedules, to say nothing of international anti-doping protocols, had been ruptured beyond repair.
Four-time Olympic hockey champion Hayley Wickenheiser, the first IOC member to criticize the body's reluctance to postpone, called it the message athletes deserved to hear.
To all the athletes: take a breath, regroup, take care of yourself and your families. Your time will come, she wrote on Twitter.
IOC President Thomas Bach and Japanese prime minister Abe Shinzo met via phone Tuesday morning, and they, along with a handful of executives from the IOC and Japan's organizing committee, agreed to make the call.
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Other Olympics 1916, 1940 and 1944 have been canceled because of war, but none have ever been postponed for any reason, let alone a renegade virus that has accounted for more than 375,000 cases worldwide, with numbers growing exponentially.
The Tokyo Games would still be called the 2020 Olympics, even though they will be held in 2021.
The leaders agreed that the Olympic Games in Tokyo could stand as a beacon of hope, the IOC said in a statement.
The decision offers a sense of relief for athletes, who no longer have to press forward with training under near-impossible conditions, unsure of when, exactly, they need to be ready and for what.
Thankful to finally have some clarity regarding The Olympic Games. A huge decision but I think the right one for sure, British sprinter Adam Gemili said on Twitter.
"Time to regain, look after each other during this difficult period and go again when the time is right!"
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