Tokyo organizers on Tuesday said that they have no ‘B Plan’ in the event the Olympics need to be postponed again because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Masa Takaya, the spokesman for the Tokyo Olympics, said organizers are proceeding under the assumption the Olympics will open on July 23, 2021. The Paralympics follow on August 24.
Those dates were set last month by the International Olympic Committee and Japanese officials after the coronavirus pandemic made it clear the Olympics could not be held as scheduled this summer.
“We are working toward the new goal,” Takaya said on a teleconference call with journalists.
“We don’t have a B Plan.”
The severity of the pandemic and the death toll has raised questions if it will even be feasible to hold the Olympics in just over 15 months. Several Japanese journalists raised the question on the call.
“All I can tell you today is that the new games’ dates for both the Olympic and Paralympic Games have been just set up,” Takaya said.
“In that respect, Tokyo 2020 and all concerned parties now are doing their very best effort to deliver the games next year.”
IOC President Thomas Bach was asked about the possibility of a postponement in an interview published in the German newspaper Die Welt on Sunday.
He did not answer the question directly, but said later that Japanese organizers and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe indicated they “could not manage a postponement beyond next summer at the lastest.”