Canada Pulls Out of Tokyo Olympics Among Other 2020 Sporting Events

Canada has gone on record as the first country to pull out of the upcoming 2020 world Olympics games slated to take place in Tokyo, Japan in July. The country announced it also won’t be participating in any sporting events scheduled in 2020.

Japan has been reluctant on postponing the upcoming Tokyo Olympics firmly holding its stand that the games will go on as scheduled.

Canada’s Olympic and Paralympic Committees has been on the forefront raising concerns while advocating for the games be pushed at a later date due to the current coronavirus situation. Other parties including U.S. Track and Field and UK Athletics have also called in for a postponement of the event.

However, Tokyo has been adamant that the games will still take place as scheduled, it’s from this conflict Canada has  announced it won’t be sending its athletes to the Tokyo 2020 Olympics if the sporting event goes ahead as initially planned.

According to Canada’s communications chief for the Canadian Paralympic Committee, Martin Richard, the decision to keep its citizens safe supersedes the decision to participate in any games.

“The world is facing a crisis and this is more important than any other sport event. We decided that was the right thing to do,” said Richard.

Richard also pointed out most of the Paralympics athletes have underlying health conditions adding it would be risky to expose them such a time when the coronavirus still remains largely uncontained. Therefore, Richard says it would be unethical for them to put these Paralympic athletes at such a risky position.

On Sunday, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for the first time hinted at a possible postponement of the event when it announced it will be holding meetings in the next four weeks to contemplate whether to postpone the event by months or even by a year.

IOC also made it clear cancellation of the event was not a choice on the table.

On Monday, Japan’s Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, while addressing the government ruled out postponing the event with an exception that it will only be postponed if holding it in its complete form turns out impossible.

“If that becomes difficult, we may have no option but to consider postponing the Games, given the Olympic principle of putting the health of athletes first,” said the Prime Minister.