The Coronavirus and the Postponement of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Explained

If the Olympics are every four years, what about the Winter Games?

Both the Summer and Winter Olympic Games are held every four years. Since 1994, though, the two events have been staggered, so that there are an Olympics every two years. The next two Summer Games after Tokyo, for example, are scheduled to take place in Paris in 2024 and Los Angeles in 2028. The next Winter Games will be in Beijing in 2022 and Milan in 2026.

What will the athletes do now?

A lot of them are asking that very question. Thousands of athletes around the world were planning, or hoping, to compete at the Games this year. Most of them will have to keep training — a task more complicated in a pandemic — and just aim now to reach their peak of performance sometime in 2021 instead of late this summer. But the postponement will complicate things for a lot of them. Not all Olympians, for instance, are rich and famous. Many of them have other jobs, go to school or have life plans that they have put on hold to pursue their athletic careers. They have to decide whether it’s worth their time to wait another year for the event to take place.

What about people who have tickets for the Olympics?

They’re working on that. Tickets had been in high demand, in Japan and around the world, and more than five million of them had been sold. Another round of sales was set to begin in May, but that has been delayed for now. Toshiro Muto, the chief executive of the organizing committee in Tokyo, noted that the organizers would “make sure not to inconvenience people as much as possible.” But, he admitted, they weren’t yet sure how it would all play out.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/article/coronavirus-summer-olympics-postponed.html