2020 Olympic Games postponed until 2021 due to coronavirus pandemic

The 2020 Olympic Games, which were scheduled to take place in Tokyo in July, has been postponed until 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe had asked the International Olympics Committee to postpone due to measures taken to combat COVID-19 and the IOC made the decision on Tuesday, saying the Games will be held "not later than summer 2021" but will still be called the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Sebastian Coe, the head of World Athletics, had said in a letter to the International Olympic Committee that going ahead with the event in July was "neither feasible nor desirable".

Lord Coe highlighted the risk to athletes' physical and emotional health if they were unable to train properly during the build-up to the Olympics.

He also raised concerns about the fairness of the situation from a sporting perspective, saying: "We can no longer expect a fair and level playing field in our sport given the number of athletes who are struggling to train in various countries due to measures put in place to reduce the spread of coronavirus."

A "scaled-down" Olympics was thought to be one of the options under discussion by the IOC. However, Japanese PM Abe believed the Games should be postponed until next year if they could not take place in a "complete form".

The Olympics were set to be the centrepiece of the sporting year, particularly given the postponement of the Euro 2020 football tournament until 2021. The Tokyo Games had been scheduled to run from July 24 to August 9 with the Paralympics starting on August 25.

British athletes Katarina Johnson-Thompson and Dina Asher-Smith were second-favourites to strike gold in the heptathlon and 200m respectively.

The USA's Christian Coleman was Sky Bet's evens favourite to win the men's 100m while Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer were the top three in the betting to win the men's singles tennis. However, the Olympic dream has faded away for those star names and thousands of other athletes – at least for 2020.

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