The Olympic Games in Tokyo are officially postponed.
Japan’s prime minister Shinzo Abe has been the first one who confirmed that he and Thomas Bach, the IOC president, agreed to postpone the Tokyo 2020 Games by a year, due to the coronavirus pandemic.
„I proposed to postpone for about a year and president Bach responded with 100 percent agreement“, Shinzo Abe told journalists after his today’s telephone talks with Thomas Bach.
Quickly after Abe, the International Olympic Committee also confirmed the postponement. The IOC issued a joint statement of The International Olympic Committee and The Tokyo 2020 Organising Committee, in which announced:
“In the present circumstances and based on the information provided by the WHO (World Health Organization) today, the IOC President and the Prime Minister of Japan have concluded that the Games of the XXXII Olympiad in Tokyo 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.”
The Olympic flame, which arrived in Japan a few days ago, will stay in Japan.
The IOC announced that It had been also agreed that the Games will keep the name Olympic and Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020.
This decision was expected after a lot of calls to the Games postponement that have come in the last few days. On Sunday, the IOC already announced that it would discuss the postponement in the following days. Yesterday, Australia and Canada announced that they won’t send athletes to games if they held this year. Many of the other sport federations also supported an idea of the postponement. The originally planned dates for the Games were July 24th – August 9th.
The international sport federations have to make the next move and to decide when the qualifications will be finished. That decision will be made in an agreement with the IOC. Everybody expects that the Olympic water polo qualifications, which were postponed to the second half of May (women) and early June (men) will get new dates.
To remind, after last week’s meeting with the international sport federations, the IOC announced:
“All quota places that have already been allocated to date remain allocated to the NOCs and athletes that obtained them.”
Water polo teams qualified for the Olympic Games and available berths
Men
Qualified teams
Serbia– World League winner
Italy – World champion
Spain – silver medal at the World Championships
USA – gold medal at the Pan American Games
Australia – Oceanian Continental Selection
Hungary – European champion
South Africa – the representative of Africa
Kazakhstan – the champion of the Asian Games
Japan – host
Available berths
Top three teams from the qualification tournament in Rotterdam (planned dates are May 31-June 7)
Participants at the tournament in Rotterdam
Group A: Greece, Montenegro, Brazil, Canada, Georgia, Turkey.
Group B: Croatia, Germany, Russia, Romania, Netherlands, France.
Women
Qualified teams
USA – World League winner
Spain – silver medalist at the World Championships
Russia – silver medalist at the European Championships
Canada – silver medalist at the Pan American Games
Australia – Oceanian Continental Selection
South Africa – African Continental Selection
China – the champion of the Asan Games
Japan – host
Available berths
Top two teams from the qualification tournament in Trieste (planned dates May 17-24).
Participants at the tournament in Trieste
Group A: Italy, Netherlands, France, Uzbekistan, Slovakia
Group B: Hungary, Greece, New Zealand, Israel, Kazakhstan
