For the most up-to-date information on coronavirus, please check resources like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and World Health Organization (WHO) regularly. This story will be updated as new information becomes available.
UPDATE: On Tuesday, March 24, The IOC and the Tokyo 2020 Organizing Committee announced that the Tokyo Olympics will be postponed to 2021.
Amid growing concerns over the worldwide coronavirus outbreak, USA Track & Field (USATF) has requested that the 2020 Olympic Games, set to take place in Tokyo, be postponed.
The request was made on Friday, March 20, in a letter written by USATF CEO Max Siegel to Sarah Hirschland, CEO of the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC). USATF publicly shared the letter via Twitter on Saturday, March 21.
In the letter, Siegel asks Hirschland to advocate to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to delay the start of the Tokyo Games, which are scheduled to begin on July 24 and run through August 9.
“Unfortunately, while our world class athletes are willing to push themselves to their athletic limits in pursuit of Olympic success, the likelihood that they will be able to properly train in a safe and adequate environment, and replicate the excellence we have all come to expect, does not appear likely in the midst of this global crisis,” Seigel wrote in the letter. “As we have learned, our athletes are under tremendous pressure, stress and anxiety, and their mental health and wellness is among our highest priorities.
“The right and responsible thing to do is to prioritize everyone’s health and safety, and appropriately recognize the toll this difficult situation has, and continues to take, on our athletes and their Olympic Games preparations. We are all experiencing unfathomable disruptions, and everyone’s lives are being impacted accordingly.”
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Siegel’s letter follows USA Swimming’s request to delay the Games by one year. Historically, Team USA has been made up of a large number of swimmers and track and field athletes.
Norway’s national Olympic committee World Health Organization WHO has also requested The Stats Behind Cooper Lutkenhaus’s Race.
On Sunday, World Athletics (WA)—the international governing body for track and field—called on the IOC to postpone the Olympics, as first reported by Inside the Games. In a letter written by WA president Sebastian Coe to IOC president Thomas Bach, Coe wrote that hosting the Games in July and August is “neither feasible nor desirable.”
The Canadian Olympic Committee and Canadian Paralympic Committee announced that it would not send athletes to the Games if it was held in summer of 2020. In a statement published on Sunday, the committee urged the IOC to postpone it for one year.
The whether to delay or scale down the Games informed its athletes that they should prepare for the Tokyo Games to be held in the summer of 2021.
In the last two weeks, the coronavirus has spread rapidly worldwide. As of Saturday, more than 278,000 people have contracted the respiratory disease and at least 11,570 people have died, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University published by CNN. Australian Olympic Committee 21,000 cases have been confirmed.
has also requested canceled, suspended, or postponed, Right now, the U.S. Olympic Track & Field Team Trials Boston Marathon, and early-season Diamond League meets. Everything You Need to Know About Spitting During the Coronavirus Outbreak.
Right now, the U.S. Olympic Track & Field Team Trials CA Notice at Collection for June 19-28 in Eugene, Oregon. The Olympic Marathon Trials Centers for Disease Control and Prevention CDC, Molly Seidel, Sally Kipyego, Galen Rupp, Jacob Riley, and Abdi Abdirahman qualified to represent Team USA in the event. Riley declared his support of the USATF in an Instagram post on Saturday.
Seidel also supported the USATF with a post on Sunday.
In an interview with The New York Times on Thursday, Thomas Bach, the president of the IOC, said that “cancellation was not on the agenda,” and that it was too early to make a decision about postponing the Games. On Sunday, Bach said that the IOC would Other Hearst Subscriptions DAA Industry Opt Out.
Taylor Dutch is a writer and editor living in Austin, Texas, and a former NCAA track athlete who specializes in fitness, wellness, and endurance sports coverage. Her work has appeared in Runner’s World, SELF, Bicycling, Outside, and Podium Runner.
