TOKYO/LAUSANNE (Reuters) – Officials in charge of staging Tokyo’s Olympic Games crowded around a low table inside Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s residence late Tuesday, wincing as they spoke by phone with the head of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
FILE PHOTO: Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, President of the Tokyo 2020 Organizing Committee Yoshiro Mori, Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike, Olympic Minister Seiko Hashimoto and Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga attend a telephone conference with International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach (not pictured) at Abe’s official residence in Tokyo, Japan March 24, 2020, in this photo released by Japan’s Cabinet Public Relations Office via Kyodo. Mandatory credit Japan’s Cabinet Public Relations Office via Kyodo/via REUTERS
Minutes later, Abe emerged to inform a gaggle of reporters that he had just spoken with Thomas Bach, the IOC’s president, and that they had agreed to officially delay the Tokyo Olympics.
The evening call between Abe and Bach concluded days and weeks of negotiations between Tokyo and Lausanne, where the IOC is based, and came after repeated public denials by Japanese officials that a pandemic might derail the Games.
Through interviews with more than a dozen people involved in the process over recent weeks, Reuters has pieced together an account of the frenetic days that led to Tuesday’s announcement.
It was an extraordinary turnaround for an Olympics that was expected to be held without major issues by a country known for public safety and economic stability. It also revealed a fatal miscalculation by Japanese and IOC officials of public sentiment at a time of heightened fears over the coronavirus.
In the days leading up to the decision, organizers of the Games were under pressure from major players in global sports: sponsors wanting updates on event plans, powerful sports federations worried about athlete safety, and Japanese officials seeking to maintain a united front to support the 2020 Games.
But ultimately, it was the growing chorus of concerns from famous athletes and nations under lockdown that sunk Tokyo’s hopes to hold the Olympics as planned in July, according to senior officials at the IOC and on Tokyo’s organizing committee.
Japan’s government did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
BREWING TROUBLE
The first inkling of trouble came in February as the coronavirus began to spread outside of China, where it emerged late last year.
When asked on Feb 14 about the rising number of cases in China, John Coates, a member of the IOC’s Coordination Commission for Tokyo, brushed off questions from reporters about contingency plans, saying the country had been able to monitor its athletes “since day one”. Most of them had been preparing for the Games overseas and would therefore not need to be quarantined o