“There are a lot of pieces of a huge and very difficult jigsaw puzzle,” he said. But the committee’s leaders never seriously considered fully canceling the Games or taking them away from Tokyo. The Japanese have spent more than $10 billion preparing for the Olympics during the past seven years, after beating out Madrid and Istanbul to win the rights to host. The Olympics have avoided postponements several times previously, even following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and another attack during the 1972 Munich Olympics. This delay came after numerous other postponements or cancellations of sports in Japan and around the world, and after many governments urged people to limit their physical interactions.

Source: International New York Times March 24, 2020 12:25 UTC