September 8, 2020
– The postponed 2020 Tokyo Olympics will go ahead next year regardless of the coronavirus pandemic, IOC Vice President John Coates told AFP Monday, vowing they will be the “games that conquered COVID.”
The Olympics have never been canceled for reasons other than war and Coates, speaking during an interview conducted via telephone, was adamant the Tokyo Games will start on their revised date.
“It will take place with or without COVID,” said Coates, who heads the IOC’s Coordination Commission for the Tokyo Games. “The games will start on July 23 next year.
“The games were going to be, their theme, the Reconstruction Games after the devastation of the tsunami,” he said, referring to a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami that struck the Tohoku region in 2011.
“Now very much these will be the games that conquered COVID, the light at the end of the tunnel.”
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