The International Olympics Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach reiterated that IOC has taken a right and reasonable decision by not postpone the Olympics Game in an interview with New York Times yesterday. He also pointed out that Olympics is not like other sport association who have postponed some of their events to April and May. Re echoed their earlier stance that it would be too early to make decisions now when the Game is still four months away.
“We are affected by this crisis like everyone else and we are concerned like everybody else,” he said. We are not living in a bubble or on another planet. We are in the middle of our societies.”
Asked whether there is a group working out what would be needed to move Tokyo 2020 to a later date, Bach added: “This would mean we are speculating about developments.”We don’t know what the situation will be.”Of course we are considering different scenarios, but we are contrary to many other sports organisations or professional leagues in that we are four and a half months away from the Games.They are even more optimistic than we are, because most of them have postponed their events until April or the end of May”, he added.
“We are talking about the end of July. What makes this crisis so unique and so difficult to overcome is the uncertainty,” Bach said.
“Nobody today can tell you what the developments are tomorrow, what they are in one month, not to mention in more than four months. Therefore, it would not be responsible in any way to set a date or take a decision right now, which would be based on the speculation about the future developments.”
He added: “There are many different prognoses. Some are telling you it will everywhere follow, others are saying this will take much longer.”
“The third ones are saying there will be different waves and we will have to live with it for a long time. This is why we rely on our task force, including the World Health Organization, who are telling us it is too early to take a decision, and we are at the same time monitoring closely what is happening.”