The summer sports schedule is currently bare for 2020. Various leagues still hope to finish their paused seasons later this summer, but the biggest thing officially off the sports calendar is the Tokyo Summer Olympics. Originally slated for the summer of 2020, the Olympics were postponed until the summer of 2021.
The Olympiad was pushed a full year into the future because of a variety of scheduling issues and uncertainty about the state of the COVID-19 pandemic. NFL television contracts, for example, made it impossible for the Games to be pushed a few months into the fall of 2020. And moving the games to the summer of 2021 means qualifying for sports like basketball and others may make for a complicated calendar.
But now we know that it’s the summer of 2021 or bust for the Tokyo Olympics. According to a report from The Wrap, a Japanese official says that there’s no room for a third chance for the Tokyo Olympiad. If the games somehow get pushed back again, the entirety of the Games will be canceled.
“At that time it is canceled. If such a problem as war occurs in the past, it is usually canceled,” Yoshiro Mori, told Nikkan Sports. The Modern Olympics have been canceled three times due to World Wars: In 1916, 1940 and 1944.
It certainly makes sense that time is short on getting the Olympiad in at this point. The games run every four years, but a move to 2022 would also put the Summer Games in the same year as the Winter Olympics. Those Games used to happen in the same year, mind you, but the Olympics changed their scheduling and now have a considerable marketing apparatus that dominates the sports landscape every two years. That’s all been interrupted considerably due to COVID-19, and now we know the IOC has designated 2021 as the last chance for the Tokyo Olympiad.
[via The Wrap]
