Olympic chiefs have taken the decision to postpone the Tokyo 2020 Games, a senior figure claimed last night.
Twenty four hours after Games boss Thomas Bach said the International Olympic Committee would give itself four weeks to make the call, Dick Pound revealed their true thinking.
“On the basis of the information the IOC has, postponement has been decided,” the veteran IOC member 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.”
Pound’s revelation came hours after World Athletics indicated it was prepared to shift next year’s world championships in Oregon to allow the Olympics to be rearranged for July 2021.
It also followed Dina Asher-Smith branding the IOC’s decision to delay a final decision by another month as “irresponsible”.
A conference call between UK Sport, the British Olympic Association and British Paralympic Association with the bosses of all participating sports will take place today.
Prior to Pound’s intervention BOA chair Hugh Robertson had said he expected Team GB to “shortly” follow Canada and Australia in announcing they will not compete given the escalating and increasingly deadly coronavirus pandemic.
Today’s summit meeting is likely to provide even greater clarity for the home athletes by standing them down from training with immediate effect.
For while the BOA are understood to be happy for the IOC to take their time over rescheduling, sympathetic to how complex a task it is.
What they are no longer prepared to allow is for athletes to put the health of themselves, their coaches and loved ones at risk by trying to train at a time of national emergency.
Robertson said: “There is the appropriateness of holding an Olympic Games at a time like this. We can’t see any way that this can go ahead as things are constituted at the moment.
“Elite training facilities are perfectly understandably and quite correctly closed around the country, so there is no way they (athletes) could undertake the preparation they need to get ready for a Games.”
A survey carried out by the Athletics Association, a body launched last year to give elite track and field athletes greater say in the future of the sport, showed overwhelming support for an immediate postponement.
“We’re imploring the IOC to announce the postponement of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics much sooner than in four weeks’ time,” they said in a statement.
“Whilst we appreciate being told about the new timeframe, we feel it’s unfair to ask athletes to continue to live and train in this limbo.”
Lawrence Waterman, the head of health and safety at the London 2012 Olympics, added: “It is simply not safe to put the Games on during a global pandemic.
“People’s safety and health should come before the costs of delaying contracts.”
