The International Olympic Committee has announced that the 2021 Tokyo Olympic will be held from July 23 to August 8, 2021 in Japan. The Paralympics will run from August 24 to September 5. The decision to postpone both events was taken to protect the health of the athletes and everyone involved, and to support the containment of Covid-19 virus. So far only two Rwandan athletics Felicien Muhitira and John Hakizimana had secured tickets for the games. The two will compete in the men’s marathon. With time, more qualifications are expected to come through, especially in individual sports since – in team sports – no Rwandan team has ever qualified for the Olympics. In Paralympic Games, Rwanda women’s national sitting volleyball team booked its ticket to the 16th Paralympics after retaining the African Championships title for a third consecutive time following the 2015 and 2017 triumphs. The Tokyo 2020 Olympics were due to open on July 24 this year and run for 16 days, but the coronavirus pandemic forced the first peace-time postponement of the Games. The IOC and Japan had for weeks insisted the show could go on but the rapid spread of COVID-19 prompted growing disquiet among athletes and sporting federations. The Olympics was the highest-profile sporting casualty of the coronavirus that has wiped out fixtures worldwide and all but halted professional sport. According to the latest budget, the Games were due to cost $12.6 billion, shared between the organising committee, the government of Japan and Tokyo city. The Japanese government had touted the Games as the “Recovery Olympics”, designed to show how the country had bounced back from the 2011 triple disaster of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown in the northeastern Fukushima region. The Games are now being billed as the expression of humanity’s triumph over the coronavirus. “Humankind currently finds itself in a dark tunnel,” IOC chief Thomas Bach said in Monday’s statement announcing the new date.
