After Canada announced that it won’t send its athletes to the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, Australia has also withdrawn from the 2020 Olympics, stating that sending a team to the Tokyo Games amid the coronavirus pandemic is untenable.
In addition, the Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) believes that the Olympics will not be able to start this July as has been scheduled and its athletes should start preparing for the event if it happens next year.
Notably, the AOC held an executive board meeting on Monday and stated that it was impossible to send a contingent to the Tokyo 2020, keeping in mind the global health crisis.
“We have athletes based overseas, training at central locations around Australia as teams and managing their own programs,” AOC chief executive Matt Carroll said in a statement on Monday.
“With travel and other restrictions, this becomes an untenable situation. The IOC had adopted the key principles of putting athlete health first and ensuring it acted in their best interests and the interests of sport,” the statement added.
“This decision reflects those principles. We are now in a position where we can plan with greater certainty,” he concluded.
Australia’s announcement comes after Canada announced that it would not participate in the Tokyo Games this year if the same proceeds as per the given schedule.