Tokyo's postponed Olympics will go ahead next year regardless of the coronavirus pandemic, IOC vice president John Coates said, vowing they will be the "games that conquered Covid".
The Olympics have never been cancelled outside of the world wars. Mr Coates said: "The games were going to be, their theme, the Reconstruction Games after the devastation of the tsunami," referring to a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami in northeastern Japan in 2011. "Now very much these will be the games that conquered Covid, the light at the end of the tunnel." In a landmark decision, the 2020 Olympics were postponed because of the global march of the pandemic and they are now set to open on 23 July 2021.