International Olympic Committee member Dick Pound announced today that the summer games in Japan will be postponed until at least 2021, citing the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
“On the basis of the information the IOC has, postponement has been decided. The parameters going forward have not been determined,” said Dick Pound, a longstanding veteran of the organization.
Added Dick Pound: “It will come in stages. We will postpone this and begin to deal with all the ramifications of moving this, which are immense.”
Dick Pound’s comments followed IOC president Thomas Bach’s earlier suggestion that it was possible the Tokyo Games would called off.
Earlier, Dick Pound had taken a wait-and-see line — “we can kind of see how things develop to see whether there are more effective means to prevent the spread and to mitigate the lethality of it that we don’t know yet” — but the withdrawal from the games of major nations and the outbreak’s increasing severity led the committee to take a more conclusive approach.
“The Games are not going to start on July 24, that much I know,” said Dick Pound, born Richard William Duncan Pound in Ontario, in an interview with USA Today.
Dick. Pound.