Olympics has officially been postponed until 2021
Tokyo 2020 Games has been postponed until the summer of 2021....
Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the head of the International Olympic Committee Thomas Bach have confirmed the Tokyo 2020 Games, featuring golf, will be postponed by a year due to the coronavirus pandemic.
"I proposed to postpone for about a year and president Bach responded with 100 percent agreement," Shinzo Abe told reporters referring to Thomas Bach, head of the IOC.
After his telephone talks with IOC President Bach, PM Abe spoke to the press and explained that the two have agreed that the Tokyo Olympic Games would not be cancelled, and the games will be held by the summer of 2021. pic.twitter.com/ihe8To2g3R
— PM's Office of Japan (@JPN_PMO) March 24, 2020
The PM's office of Japan's twitter account tweeted the following: "After his telephone talks with IOC President Bach, PM Abe spoke to the press and explained that the two have agreed that the Tokyo Olympic Games would not be cancelled, and the games will be held by the summer of 2021."
Japan has successfully slowed the spread of COVID-19 in its country so far, with just 1,140 diagnosed cases as of today, according to date supplied by Johns Hopkins University's Center for Systems Science and Engineering.
However, with the spread of coronavirus deepening elsewhere around the world, including Europe and North America, there was a growing number of athletes and organisers urging a postponement of the Games.
The board has confirmed the Games will not be cancelled as it "would not solve any of the problems or help anybody."
Golf had been scheduled to tee off at the Tokyo Games at the end of July.
The Olympic Golf field is restricted to 60 players for each of the men’s and women’s competitions.
The IGF utilises the Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR) to create the Olympic Golf Rankings as a method of determining eligibility. The top-15 world-ranked players are eligible for the Olympics, with a limit of four players from a given country.
Beyond the top-15, players are eligible based on the world rankings, with a maximum of two eligible players from each country that does not already have two or more players among the top-15.
