IOC member: No Summer Olympics in 2021 means no Winter Olympics in Beijing.

Last updated on February 14th, 2023 at 12:41 pm

International Olympic Committee member, Dick Pound says that if the Tokyo summer olympics is cancelled next year, it will also mean that winter olympics will also be cancelled in Beijing scheduled for later in the year 2022.

After being pushed back by a year due the outbreak of coronavirus, the Olympics is scheduled to be held from July 23 to August 8 in 2021 and Winter Olympics had been scheduled from February 4 to February 20, just six months in between both the major games. “Taking the political side out of it for the moment says there is a COVID problem in July and August next year in Tokyo, it is hard to imagine there is not going to be a knock-on effect in the same area five months later,” Pound told Reuters in a phone interview.

“Taking the political side out of it for the moment says there is a COVID problem in July and August next year in Tokyo, it is hard to imagine there is not going to be a knock-on effect in the same area five months later”

He implied that if there is no vaccine and the novel coronavirus keeps on spreading as rapidly as it is right now, then the IOC can definitely look at postponing or even canceling it. More than anything, the political aspect of conducting or not conducting winter olympics in China are more prevalent than the virus containment. China- US relationship is a big part of it. 

The threat is not so much of a US boycott of the Games, but one where China might consider barring the US from taking part if the country cannot gain control over the virus.

“At least one part of the US is planning an election campaign which is all anti-China,” said Pound. “If you are a conspiracy theorist, you might say well, the WHO is strongly influenced by China and they could probably without smirking too much go to a WHO meeting, from which the US will no longer be associated, and say this isn’t positive health.There could be the largest number of cases in the world (in the U.) and it would be dangerous having Americans coming to China.That is an extreme supposition. There are all kinds of crazy things that could happen.”

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