Tokyo Olympics Organizers Ruling Out Games Behind Closed Doors

TOKYO (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 22nd July, 2020) The Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games Organizing Committee is not considering for now the option of holding the event without spectators, but if the audience is not allowed cancellation of the Games would probably be the only choice, president Yoshiro Mori said in an interview published on Wednesday.

The official gave an interview to the NHK broadcaster ahead of Thursday, the day the Summer Olympic Games were initially meant to start. In late March, the International Olympic Committee, together with the organizing committee of the Tokyo Games, announced that the event would be postponed to 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic. Games are now scheduled to be held from July 23 to August 8, 2021.

"It is impossible to artificially reduce [the number of spectators]. If [we are to] conduct reductions, they must be justified by something, for example, the presence of only Japanese viewers," Mori said.

At the same time, the committee president said that the option of holding the Olympics without spectators was not currently being considered.

"If it happens to be the only choice [holding without spectators], then we have to think. In this case, the question of cancellation may arise," Mori added.

Commenting on the situation with the pandemic in Japan and across the world, the official said that the holding of the Games would be impossible if the epidemiological situation was the same as now, and the event depended largely on the development of COVID-19 vaccine and treatment.