Lausanne (AFP)
The International Olympic Committee wants to "simplify the organization of the Games" in order to "reduce the costs" of the Tokyo Olympic Games, postponed by a year due to the coronavirus, IOC President Thomas Bach said in an interview on Wednesday to AFP.
"The impact is enormous (...) We have never had to postpone the Olympic Games, so there is no plan for this gigantic task which we must carry out and this under the very difficult circumstances of this pandemic, "said Bach.
"Therefore, we are looking, with our Japanese partners and friends, for ways to simplify the organization of the Games, to see how we can reduce the complexity of the Games and how we can reduce the costs of these postponed Games," added the German President of the IOC.
On March 24, faced with the coronavirus crisis, the IOC made the unprecedented decision in peacetime to postpone the Tokyo Games originally planned for this summer, which will now open on July 23, 2021.
Asked whether the IOC had set a deadline to decide whether or not to maintain the Olympic Games depending on the health situation, Mr. Bach replied: "There is no deadline. If there is a thing that we learned during this pandemic, this crisis, is that the situation evolves day by day, sometimes hour after hour ".
"As a result, we cannot set a deadline. We are working on the success of these Olympic Games and we have focused on July next year," he said.
© 2020 AFP