IOC Vice-President John Coates has provided a strong indication that the Tokyo 2021 Olympics will proceed

Lachlan McKirdy

IOC Vice-President John Coates has provided a strong indication that the Tokyo 2021 Olympics will proceed image

As he reminisced on 20 years since the Opening Ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Olympics, current IOC Vice-President John Coates provided a positive update on the fate of the Tokyo Olympics to be held in 2021. 

The COVID-19 pandemic forced the Olympics to be postponed for 12 months earlier this year. 

While the new dates are still around 10 months away, there's growing concern that the event will be under threat once again. 

With no set date for a vaccine let alone how widely it will be available, many fear that an international event of the scale of the Olympics won't be feasible in such a short amount of time. 

MORE: Five Australian athletics champions selected for Tokyo 2021 Olympics

However, IOC Vice-President and Australian Olympic Committee President John Coates has given the rescheduled Games a strong endorsement in his latest update. 

Speaking at an event celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Sydney 2000 Games, Coates confirmed that he is optimistic the Games will go ahead. 

He is also extremely confident that the Games will be able to proceed even without a widely available vaccine. 

"We’re proceeding on the basis that it’s to go ahead with COVID," Coates said.

"The new cases in Japan are less than Victoria each day.

"I probably have two meetings a week on Tokyo 2020 and last week I had an hour and a half video conference with the Governor of Tokyo.

"All of our planning is proceeding on the basis that the Games will take place on the 23rd of July next year.

"We’ve obviously been going through scenario planning over the last three months to take into account COVID being at different stages both in Japan and in our 206 National Olympic Committees around the world.

"By the time we get to the end of the year, we’ll make a call on just what counter-measures we’ll need to apply for the Games to go ahead."

Coates confirmed that while the Olympics are likely to proceed as planned, some of the events including the Opening and Closing Ceremonies will be operating in a different format due to likely social distancing measures.

In other positive news, Coates also stated that if the Olympics go ahead then so will the Paralympics. 

In great news for potential travel to Japan, Coates stated that the country has already opened up their borders to some international athletes. 

"They announced yesterday that as a national government, (they are) easing restrictions now for foreign athletes to come in for competition before the Games for their athletes as well," Coates said.

"There are more and more international competitions taking place. In rowing, we had U23 World Cups in Europe, two of them in the last month. There have been Diamond Leagues in track and field, we’ve had Australian athletes over there.

"The athletes are very resilient, they will get themselves ready.

"It’s getting that final competition that will be very difficult but the bottom line is you want to compete and you’ll put up with it if you haven’t had that lead-up competition.

"We’ve had late selection before of athletes who haven’t had a full international preparation."

Coates was standing in front of the Olympic cauldron which had just been re-lit to mark 20 years since Cathy Freeman opened the Sydney Olympics. 

The incredible moment is remembered more for a technical malfunction which saw the cauldron stop for over three minutes on its way to the top of Stadium Australia. 

There were no similar technical issues on Tuesday but Coates still took a chance to reminisce on what was going through his mind in that moment. 

"I’d marched in with the team and was standing in front of it with members of our women’s rowing eight," Coates remembered.

"They’re going, ‘John is this meant to be happening?’ and I’m going ‘No!’.

"I knew very well that we’d had a lot of trouble with the engineering to get it up there, we’d thrown a lot of extra money at it in the last six months.

"I didn’t know what had gone wrong, it was an IT hitch or whatever and in my own mind I was going ‘just leave the thing there, we’ll pretend that’s what was meant to happen and we’ll get it up the next day’.

"Suddenly, it stuttered it’s way up and when it took off of course, I didn’t realise until later that it was reliant on a gas bottle to get to the top. It just got there."

You can watch the entire Opening Ceremony and the moment Cathy Freeman lit the cauldron in the player below.

 

Lachlan McKirdy

Lachlan McKirdy Photo