It didn’t take long for the International Olympic Committee to come up with new dates for the postponed Tokyo Games. Today it was announced that the competition will start on July 23, 2021, one day earlier than it would have started this year, ending Aug. 8. The Paralympic Games will begin on Aug. 24 and run through Sept. 5
Although IOC officials originally said summer would be the latest time for which the Games would be rescheduled in 2021, the organization did not take advantage of the possibility to hold them in a season that would be cooler than sizzling mid-summer. It was announced last year that the marathon would be moved 500 miles north of Tokyo to Hokkaido to ease the heat situation for those athletes.
The one-year delay will be costly. It could mean about $5.8 billion in losses, according to an estimate by Katsuhiro Miyamoto, an honorary professor at Japan’s Kansai University.
Although the IOC said that athletes who qualified for this year’s Games would keep their qualifications, that presents some problems for equestrians, who may not be using the same horses with which they qualified for this year’s Olympics. Some of the older horses may have retired, while others may not be in form during the lead-up to the Games.
The new dates have to work with the rest of the global sports calendar, with cooperation key. The World Athletics Championships, originally set for Oregon between Aug. 6 and Aug. 21 2021, will be postponed until 2022. The European championships in equestrian sports were scheduled for August.
“We support the new 2021 dates for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. This gives our athletes the time they need to get back into training and competition,” World Athletics said in a statement.
“Everyone needs to be flexible and compromise.”.
Purchased tickets would be valid for rescheduled events or a refund could be requested when the new dates were set, organizers previously confirmed.
“In terms of transport, arranging volunteers and the provision of tickets for those in Japan and overseas, as well as allowing for the Covid-19 situation, we think that it would be better to reschedule the Games to one year later than planned, in the summer of 2021,” said Yoshiro Mori, who heads the Tokyo Olympic organizing committee.