Olympics ‘continuing as planned’ but virus halts Japanese football

TOKYO: Tokyo Olympics organisers said preparations were “continuing as planned” on Tuesday as Japan’s football league became the latest sporting victim of the coronavirus, just five months before the Games.

The J-League added to jitters around the Olympics as it called off domestic football until mid-March, starting with seven cup games scheduled for Wednesday, as fears of a pandemic grow. But Games organisers said cancelling the July 24-August 9 Olympics, which will draw millions of fans and tourists, as well as thousands of athletes and officials, had never been discussed.

“We have never discussed cancelling the Games,” said a Tokyo 2020 statement sent to AFP. “Preparations for the Games are continuing as planned.” The J-League postponement comes a day after South Korea’s K-league was suspended as COVID-19 spreads rapidly beyond China, where nearly 2,700 people have died. The Chinese Super League is also on hold.

The virus has cut a swathe through Asia’s sporting calendar and although the outbreak is expected to slow as temperatures rise, developments in Japan are being closely watched ahead of the Olympics.

J-League chairman Mitsuru Murai called it a “big decision” to temporarily shut down Japanese football, which along with South Korea and China is among the strongest in Asia. “We have decided to postpone Levain Cup games scheduled for tomorrow and all the official games... scheduled until March 15,” he told a news conference.

On Monday, a medical panel advising Japan’s government warned that the coming weeks will be “critical” in preventing the outbreak from spreading out of control. Japan’s tally is a fraction of the tens of thousands of cases and 2,663 deaths seen in China, where the epidemic emerged in the central city of Wuhan. But officials are exercising caution. Training for Olympic volunteers was suspended over the weekend, and Sunday’s Tokyo marathon has been closed to all but elite runners.

Olympics organisers have repeatedly said they’re not considering any changes to the Games, which have been seven years in the planning and are expected to cost 1.35 trillion yen ($12.2 billion). “I think we are not yet reaching that point,” Tokyo governor Yuriko Koike said on Friday, when asked if the schedule was under review.