IOC Member Says 2020 Olympic Games Will Be Postponed
Just 24 hours after the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) and Canadian Paralympic Committee announced their athletes would not be participating in the 2020 Olympic Games, IOC member Dick Pound told the press that the decision has been made to postpone event amid the coronavirus pandemic.
While details are not finalized as to when exactly the Tokyo Games will be played, it will at least be in 2021, which satisfies the conditions the COC laid out in order for their athletes to participate.
Monday the COC went public with the decision to not send Canadian athletes to the games unless there was a one-year postponement and encouraged other committees to follow suit. Australia, Norway, Portugal and Germany reportedly called for postponement as well.
For Gamecock fans that means they will get to see rising redshirt-sophomore Laeticia Amihere compete with Team Canada in 2021.
Amihere stepped away during the season to help the women’s national team qualify for the Tokyo Games.
Former Gamecock A’ja Wilson made the women’s national team while Tiffany Mitchell was named a replacement. Allisha Gray was named to the 3X3 team.
Gamecock women’s basketball head coach Dawn Staley is also going to be featured as the head coach of the women’s national team. Staley won three gold medals as a player and this will be her first trip to the Olympics as head coach.
Staley spoke to her hometown paper The Inquirer and said she understood the need to protect the athletes and coaches as she herself go sick as an assistant coach in the 2016 Olympics in Brazil during the time of the Zika outbreak.
“The last time, in Rio, I got sick. I came back with, like, pericarditis," Staley told The Inquirer.
When Staley returned home from the Rio Games she was diagnosed with the inflammation of the tissue around the heart. During her Inquirer interview she said she added she want her own health to be at risk.
“I do not want to go into a danger zone and possibly contract something we don’t have an answer for," she said.. “I just [recently] stopped taking the medicine.”