Common sense prevails: Tokyo Olympics postponed...

Tokyo skyline (photo courtesy IOC)

Common sense finally prevailed as both the International Olympic Committee and the Tokyo 2020 Organizing Committee announced this morning the postponement of this summer's Olympic Games in Japan.

IOC President Thomas Bach and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe expressed their shared concern about the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, and what it is doing to people’s lives and the significant impact it is having on global athletes’ preparations for the Games.

In the present circumstances and based on the information provided by the World Health Organization (WHO) today, the IOC President and the Prime Minister of Japan have concluded that the Games of the XXXII Olympiad in Tokyo must be rescheduled to a date beyond 2020 but not later than summer 2021, to safeguard the health of the athletes, everybody involved in the Olympic Games and the international community.

The 2021 World Athletics Outdoor Track & Field Championships and the FINA World Swimming Championships are currently scheduled to be contested in the approximate time frame that the Olympics would be pushed back to.

World Athletics president Sebastian Coe suggested earlier that it was prepared to shift the world championships in 2021 in order to accommodate a potential move of this year's Olympics, and that it had already been in discussion with the Oregon 21 Organizing Committee regarding that possibility.

UPDATE: (7:35 am) Track & field's governing body issued a statement regarding the postponement of the Olympics, also mentioning the possibility of next year's world championships being shifted.

With the Olympics now off the table for this year, could USA Track & Field hold a national championship meet in Eugene sometime this summer, assuming that life goes back to normal?

The IOC statement is available here.

NOTE: The International Olympic Committee contributed to this report.