The Tokyo Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games has announced the venues and competition schedule for the Olympic Games, which will start July 23 next year.
At a general meeting of the International Olympic Committee that was held online Friday, Yoshiro Mori, president of the organizing committee, reiterated that the schedule originally planned for the Games this summer can be used for the postponed Games in 2021.
The Tokyo Olympics, which will feature 339 events in 33 sports -- the most in Games history -- at 42 venues, will begin with a softball game between Japan and Australia in Fukushima on July 21, 2021, two days before the opening ceremony.
The opening ceremony will start at the National Stadium in Tokyo at 8 p.m. on July 23, 2021. On Aug. 7, 2021, which is being called "Super Saturday," gold medal winners will be decided in 34 events, the most in a single day.
For marathon and race walk competitions, whose venues were transferred to Sapporo, the medal ceremonies will not be held in Sapporo, but at the National Stadium in Tokyo. On Aug. 8, 2021, the closing ceremony will be held at the stadium.
Since March, when the plan to postpone the Games for one year was decided, the organizing committee has continued negotiations to adjust the original schedule for this summer to an opening on July 23, 2021, and to hold the sports at the same venues. As a result, all the facilities that have been prepared for this summer, including the athletes village and media headquarters, will be used for the Games next year.
As additional costs are being incurred due to the postponement, the organizing committee will continue to discuss how to shorten tenancies for the facilities in an attempt to cut costs and how to compensate individuals and organizations that have reserved the facilities during the tenancy period.
At a press conference on Friday after reporting at the IOC meeting, Mori said, "The largest problem is whether people can be confident that a safe and secure Olympic Games can be held," expressing his determination to deal with measures against the novel coronavirus in close cooperation among the central and Tokyo metropolitan governments, and the organizing committee.
Following the decision on the competition schedule, the organizing committee said it will present an estimate of the additional costs after this autumn and start repaying the fees to ticketholders who do not want to attend the competitions.
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