Summer Olympics in Tokyo to Start on July 23, 2021

The I.O.C. also wanted to steer clear of soccer championships in Europe and South America, which usually take place in June and are being moved to 2021. That would have risked forcing many soccer players to skip the Olympics so they could compete in their regional championships.

For the athletes, the decision will bring some welcome clarity to what has been a constantly changing scenario. The I.O.C.’s initial indecision and slow action in the face of the spreading pandemic led to growing criticism from scientists and athlete groups in the United States and Europe whose training schedules were obliterated by movement restrictions on vast sections of the population. Most major sports had already paused their competitions before Olympic organizers eventually bowed to the inevitable.

Even those who could continue to train normally expressed concerns that the absence of a firm start date meant they could not calibrate their schedules to ensure they were at their peak levels for the Games.

The path toward a reset summer Games looked much more likely when the head of track and field’s global governing body, Sebastian Coe, said he was open to moving the athletics world championships, set for next summer in Eugene, Ore.

He went further than that on Friday, telling a group of reporters that moving track and field’s main event to 2022 may in fact be beneficial.

“You may have world championships in consecutive years where we wouldn’t normally have had that,” he said. “But for athletics, it’s not such a bad thing. To go from 2021 Olympic Games into two editions of the world championships, ’22 — possibly ’22 — ’23 we’re in Budapest, and then into the Olympic Games in Paris in ’24.

“It would offer athletics center stage at a very public point of the year,” he added. “So let’s look at it from a slightly optimistic way of being able to punch our sport into the homes of many more people over a four-year consecutive cycle.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/30/sports/olympics/tokyo-olympics-date-coronavirus.html