The 2022 Olympics could also be in danger if the Tokyo Olympics are canceled

With one week left until what would have been the Olympic opening ceremony in Tokyo, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has full focus on the planning for the advanced summer games. Both the IOC and the Tokyo organizer are determined to hold the Olympics next year, despite Japanese infection control experts believing that there is a great risk of increased spread of the coronavirus during the Olympics and Paralympics.

Should the corona pandemic still have a high spread of infection around the world next summer, they will probably be forced to cancel in Tokyo. And that will set the stage for the Winter Olympics in Beijing in February 2022, Dick Pound believes.

"If you ignore the political aspects, and there is still a covid problem in July and August next year, it is hard to believe that it would not affect an Olympics in the same area five months later," he told Reuters.

Pound, a Canadian lawyer who has been vice president of the IOC and led the international anti-doping organization Wada, also points to a number of political developments and events that could affect the Winter Games in China. In particular, the unstable relationship between the United States and China, where the United States condemned China's hardening grip on Hong Kong and President Donald Trump accused China of the corona pandemic.

Pound is speculating in a number of scenarios that could occur, including that the United States would boycott the Beijing Games, but above all that China would consider refusing to allow the United States to participate if the country did not gain control of the spread of covid-19.

"If you are a conspiracy theorist, you can say that the World Health Organization, which the United States has left, may be influenced by China and say that it would be dangerous to let Americans into China because the United States has the most covid cases in the world," says Pound.

- It is an extreme assumption. And there are all sorts of weird things that can happen.

On Wednesday, the IOC's board had its meeting and on Friday, the IOC has its session with all members - nowadays all meetings are held as video conferences. These meetings are mostly about the Tokyo Olympics, and not at all about the Beijing Olympics.

After Wednesday's meeting, IOC chairman Thomas Bach said that the IOC had donated and lent 100 million dollars, equivalent to just over 900 million kronor, to the international sports federations and national Olympic committees that had financial problems due to the Olympic Games being postponed for a year.

Bach once again claimed that it is investing wholeheartedly in holding the Olympics and Paralympics next year.

- But we want them to be the frugal games that concentrate on the most important things, he says at a press conference.

Bach believes that the main focus should be on the health and well-being of the active people.

Moving the Olympics is estimated to cost the equivalent of SEK 5.9 billion.

"Setting up the Olympics due to force majeure would have been easier for the IOC as we had received insurance money back," Bach recently told the newspaper L'Équipe.

- But we exist to organize the Olympics, not to cancel them.