Organizers of this summers Olympic Games in Japan indicate theres no May deadline to cancel the event
The leader of the IOC's co-ordination commission for the Tokyo Olympics says there is no May deadline to cancel the games and he remains confident the event will go ahead despite sports coming to a virtual standstill globally amid the coronavirus outbreak.
John Coates, who will have to go into government-mandated self-isolation when he returns to Australia this week from Olympic business in Europe, told the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper: ``It's all proceeding to start on the 24th of July.''
Former IOC vice-president Dick Pound said in an interview with The Associated Press last month that the end of May loomed as a possible deadline for the IOC to make a call on the Tokyo Olympics.
But Coates, an IOC vice-president and head of the Australian Olympic Committee, told the Sydney paper in a telephone interview from Switzerland that the IOC didn't recognize the deadline and he thought Pound had backed away from it, too.
Coates says ``it's never been the IOC's position. It was Dick's idea. There is four months to go.''
with files from Canadian Press