International Olympic Committee member Dick Pound said Monday the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo will likely be postponed a year due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The comments to USA Today came less than a day after the IOC announced it would explore the possibility of postponement and come to a decision within four weeks.
“On the basis of the information the IOC has, postponement has been decided,” Pound said. “The parameters going forward have not been determined, but the Games are not going to start on July 24, that much I know.”
The IOC neither confirmed nor denied Pound’s remarks, responding instead with a short statement: “It is the right of every IOC member to interpret the decision of the IOC EB which was announced yesterday.”
Pound’s comments came less than a day after the governing body announced it would explore the possibility of postponement and come to a decision within four weeks.
Canada and Australia announced earlier they would not send their athletes to the Olympics if they aren’t postponed to next year. Germany and other countries have raised calls for a postponement, and the chair of the British Olympic Association added in a Sky Sports interview that he expected Great Britain “will be joining Canada and Australia shortly.”
The pandemic has infected more than 350,000 people in all corners of the world and killed more than 15,000, according to Johns Hopkins University’s online virus tracker. Domestic sports leagues and major events have been cancelled or postponed everywhere from the U.S. to Europe and Asia.
The Olympics, scheduled for July 24-Aug. 9, would be the most significant and largest-scale sporting event to be altered by the pandemic. The Olympics have never been suspended and haven’t been outright canceled since 1944, due to World War II.
But the IOC said in its statement Sunday that cancellation was “not on the agenda” as an option.
Pound, a Canadian and former swimming champion, is the longest-serving member of the IOC, having been with the committee since 1978. He said he believes the IOC will make its announcement “in stages.”
“We will postpone this and begin to deal with all the ramifications of moving this, which are immense,” he told USA Today.
If postponement is the IOC’s goal, it will have to undertake the process of moving its 339 planned events across 33 sports to new dates and perhaps new venues. A move to 2021 would also upend many sports’ international calendars, like the 2021 World Athletics Championships for track and field, scheduled for August 2021 in Oregon.
The announcements from Canada and Australia may have applied pressure on the IOC after other countries, including Brazil, Norway and Slovenia, previously urged the committee to postpone the Games in the interest of public health.
Some current and former American Olympians, including hurdler and bobsledder Lolo Jones, in interviews have criticized the IOC for not postponing the Games sooner. And on Friday, the CEOs of USA Swimming and USA Track and Field released letters in which they implored the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC) to call for the IOC to postpone.
USOPC CEO Sarah Hirshland responded by telling the Associated Press her job is “not to make demands of those making decisions” but to work on solutions.
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