Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, March 24th issue: Tokyo Olympics, the first postponed Olympic Games in history
Xinhua News Agency reporter Ji Ye Prince Jiang
The International Olympic Committee and Tokyo Olympic organizing committee issued a joint statement on the 24th, saying, in view of the current epidemic situation, the 32nd Olympic Games in Tokyo need to be rescheduled after 2020, but it will be held no later than the date of the summer of 2021, and the names of the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Tokyo will remain unchanged. As a result, Tokyo Olympic Games unfortunately became the first postponed Olympic games in the 124-year history of modern Olympics. However, looking back on the past, there are still many regretful moments in the Olympics, including diseases, wars and terrorist attacks.
The modern Summer Olympic Games has been one of the global sports events since its birth. It was canceled three times only in 1916,1940,1944because of the two world wars, but it is still included in the Olympic Games. In addition, the Summer Olympics have not been held as scheduled.
According to the general Constitution of the Olympic movement-the Olympic Charter, the Summer Olympics should be held in the first year of the Olympic cycle, that is to say, the Tokyo Olympic Games can only be held in 2020 in principle.
But after the 24th conference call between IOC President Bach and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the IOC executive committee meeting, the joint statement of the International Olympic Committee and the Tokyo Olympic organizing committee broke the practice of the four-year session and decided to postpone the event until 2021.
Just like the previous three Xia Olympics canceled due to war, this competition is still reserved for the 32nd Summer Olympics. Even if it is postponed to next year, event name is still “Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games”.
Due to the rapid changes in the current New Coronavirus epidemic, it is impossible to judge the the trend in the future. The International Olympic Committee and the Tokyo Olympic organizing committee jointly made such a decision, which was a last resort.
In the history of the Olympic Games for more than 100 years, they have encountered political interference, terrorist attacks, diseases, corruption, financial crisis, doping scandals and so on, but finally they all survived.
Political factors have become uncertain factors that interfere with the normal holding of the Olympic Games. In 1976, African countries boycotted the Montreal Olympic Games to protest against South Africa’s apartheid policy, the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games and 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games were successively boycotted by some countries due to the Cold War.
At the 1972 Munich Olympics, a serious political terrorist incident occurred in which many Israeli athletes were killed by terrorists. Then the Olympic Games were stopped and mourning activities were held in the main stadium. After 34 hours of suspension, the organizing committee ignored the existence of terrorists and demanded that the event start again. Other details about the Munich Olympics seem insignificant against this incident.
The epidemic is also a lingering shadow of the Olympic Games. On the eve of the opening of Tokyo Olympic Games in 1964, cholera cases appeared outside Tokyo, and preventing the spread of the epidemic became a major issue at that time. In 1998, the Nagano Winter Olympics caught up with the flu pandemic, which also caused concern. What happened in recent years is still fresh in memory. The influenza A (H1N1) flu during the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics and the virus that was about during the Olympics in August 2016……
However, these did not affect the holding of the Olympic games as scheduled. Today, the Tokyo Olympic Games, which suffered from the new coronavirus, unfortunately became the first postponed Olympic Games in history.