The President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Thomas Bach, said on Monday that he was “very confident” about the attendance of spectators at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics scheduled for next summer after being postponed for a year due to of the coronavirus.
The upsurge in infections across the world and the renewal of containment measures in some countries have revived doubts about the possibility of organizing the Games if the pandemic is not brought under control in the first half of 2021.
Following a meeting in Tokyo with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, Bach praised the measures to combat the coronavirus being prepared by the Tokyo-2020 organizing committee and the government Japanese.
“We are in the process of putting together a huge toolbox in which we will put all the measures we can imagine,” said the IOC boss.
Next year, “we will be able to take (the) right tools out of this box and use them to ensure a safe environment for all Games participants,” he added.
“It makes us very, very confident that we will be able to have spectators in the Olympic stadiums next year.”
Thomas Bach, who is on a two-day visit to Tokyo, also pledged that the IOC “goes to great lengths” to ensure that as many participants and spectators as possible are vaccinated before they arrive at the venue. Japan, if a vaccine is available by next July.
“End of the tunnel”
With this trip to Tokyo, Mr. Bach hopes to convince the athletes, the Japanese population and the sponsors of the Games that they can indeed be held next summer.
The Japanese public remains skeptical, however, and more than 60% of national sponsors have not yet committed to extend their contracts for another year, local media reported this weekend.
But Olympic organizers and Japanese officials insisted that further postponement was not an option and that cancellation was even less on the agenda.
Last Tuesday, the Tokyo-2020 organizing committee expressed “relief” after Pfizer’s announcement of the discovery of a 90% effective COVID vaccine. But he immediately stressed that he was continuing to prepare for the Games even without a vaccine, with preventive and control measures.
On November 8, the Japanese capital hosted its first international sporting event since the onset of the health crisis, a friendly gymnastics tournament in which around thirty Japanese, American, Chinese and Russian athletes participated, under the eyes of 2,000 spectators.
The organizers of the event had set very strict rules for athletes coming from abroad: they were forced to isolate themselves before the start, tested every day on site, and their movements were limited.
The spectators were also subjected to restrictions (masks, disinfection of the hands, taking of temperature, prohibition to shout in order not to spread postilions).
Decisions on the number of spectators at the Olympics next year or on the rules for the public will be taken next spring, said last Thursday Toshiro Muto, general manager of the Tokyo-2020 organizing committee.
He said quarantine rules could be lifted for foreign spectators.
The Japanese Prime Minister wanted to be optimistic Monday, reaffirming that the next Games would serve as “proof that humanity has overcome the virus”.
“Together we can make these Olympics and the Olympic flame the light at the end of the tunnel we all find ourselves in with this coronavirus crisis,” Bach added.