Opinion | Tokyo 2020 at real risk as China coronavirus truths come to light
- War has been the only reason to prevent previous modern Olympics but revelations over Wuhan outbreak pose problem
- Qualifiers have already been moved outside of China but scale of movement around region and visitor numbers add layers
In the long history of the Olympics the Summer Games has been cancelled three times.
On each occasion since the Modern Olympics returned in 1896, it was because of war. The first world war accounted for 1916 and the second world war took out both the 1940 and 1944 Games and their sister Winter Games.
Now, as we near six months out from the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, which run from July 24 to August 9 in the Japanese capital, it might be time to think that another one of the four horseman of the apocalypse – pestilence – could claim the next Games.
This is fuelled by revelations around the ongoing global spread of the deadly Wuhan coronavirus, fuelling fears of a global pandemic.
The first of those is a report published in the medical journal, The Lancet, on January 24. This study, written by researchers and doctors on the ground in Wuhan, suggests that what we all thought we knew might not be the case at all.