The International Olympic Committee (IOC) gave further strong backing to this summer's Tokyo Olympics and urged athletes to prepare "full steam" despite the coronavirus threat.
Both Tokyo 2020 Olympics organisers and the IOC have repeatedly stressed that the July 24-August 9 Games will go ahead as planned despite the outbreak, and that there is no plan B.
"We are preparing for a successful Olympic Games Tokyo 2020," IOC head Thomas Bach said at an executive board meeting to discuss the situation.
"I would like to encourage all the athletes to continue their preparation for the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 with great confidence and full steam.
"From our side, we will continue to support the athletes and the National Olympic Committees."
The 66-year-old German lawyer and former Olympic fencing champion has a firm grip on IOC decision-making and is known for sticking to his guns in adversity.
However, multiple sports events around the world have been cancelled during the epidemic, which has killed nearly 3,000 people in China and spread to more than 60 nations including Japan where infections are near 289 and six people have died.
Dick Pound, the longest-serving member of the IOC, suggested last week there is a risk of cancellation in Japan if the virus is not contained by the end of May.
Earlier on Tuesday, Japan's Olympic minister, Seiko Hashimoto, said the event could be postponed until the end of the year.
“The IOC has the right to cancel the games only if they are not held during 2020,” Hashimoto told parliament. “This can be interpreted to mean the games can be postponed as long as they are held during the calendar year.”
Asked if she believed the Olympics should be still held even if the coronavirus outbreak is worse than it is now, Hashimoto said: “We are making the utmost effort so that we don’t have to face that situation.”
Any decision to move the games back would impact international broadcasters, who would have sway over any changes.
The International Olympic Committee gets 73 per cent of its $5.7 billion [Dh20.9bn] income in a four-year Olympic cycle from selling broadcast rights. About half of that TV income is from American network NBC.
The 1964 Tokyo Olympics were held in October. But the games have now shifted to summer, largely because it's the only time slot open for sports broadcasters.
North America in the fall is filled with the NFL, college football, baseball, basketball and hockey. Europe is jammed with football in England, Spain, Germany, France and Italy, not to mention other popular sports on the continent including rugby and cricket.
Tokyo organizers on Tuesday were forced to call off a Paralympic wheelchair rugby test event following suggestions from Prime Minister Shizo Abe to hold down large crowd events for several weeks.
Tokyo organizers have 17 test events remaining on their schedule. The last one is to end on May 8. Most are small events featuring only local athletes. The most significant is a gymnastics test on April 4-6 that is expected to have non-Japanese athletes competing.
Japan's professional baseball league is playing preseason games in stadiums without fans, and the soccer J-League has suspended play until March 18.
The Tokyo Marathon was held on Sunday with only a few hundred elite runners, instead of a public event for 30,000 participants.
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Will the pound fall to parity with the dollar?
The idea of pound parity now seems less far-fetched as the risk grows that Britain may split away from the European Union without a deal.
Rupert Harrison, a fund manager at BlackRock, sees the risk of it falling to trade level with the dollar on a no-deal Brexit. The view echoes Morgan Stanley’s recent forecast that the currency can plunge toward $1 (Dh3.67) on such an outcome. That isn’t the majority view yet – a Bloomberg survey this month estimated the pound will slide to $1.10 should the UK exit the bloc without an agreement.
New Prime Minister Boris Johnson has repeatedly said that Britain will leave the EU on the October 31 deadline with or without an agreement, fuelling concern the nation is headed for a disorderly departure and fanning pessimism toward the pound. Sterling has fallen more than 7 per cent in the past three months, the worst performance among major developed-market currencies.
“The pound is at a much lower level now but I still think a no-deal exit would lead to significant volatility and we could be testing parity on a really bad outcome,” said Mr Harrison, who manages more than $10 billion in assets at BlackRock. “We will see this game of chicken continue through August and that’s likely negative for sterling,” he said about the deadlocked Brexit talks.
The pound fell 0.8 per cent to $1.2033 on Friday, its weakest closing level since the 1980s, after a report on the second quarter showed the UK economy shrank for the first time in six years. The data means it is likely the Bank of England will cut interest rates, according to Mizuho Bank.
The BOE said in November that the currency could fall even below $1 in an analysis on possible worst-case Brexit scenarios. Options-based calculations showed around a 6.4 per cent chance of pound-dollar parity in the next one year, markedly higher than 0.2 per cent in early March when prospects of a no-deal outcome were seemingly off the table.
Bloomberg
