2020 + 1

2020 Summer Olympics will begin on Friday, 23rd July, 2021. It will go on till Sunday, 8th August. Becoming the host country of the Olympics is not their first time, Japan has hosted 3 Olympics from the past.

The Japanese government presumed to have over 20 million foreign visitors. As a result, Japan had been doing enormous preparations and even took risk of huge investments. Hosting such an event may bring a positive impact on the economic development of the country.

Here is a list of few things their Government was doing as preparations for the Games. Increase in English education, renovating cultural Heritage sites, improvements in transportation and roads, changing the rules of smoking in restaurants and creating a new national arena. They are also creating athletes' uniforms from recycled cloths, running test events to train the workers and volunteers. Interestingly, they are collecting donated materials to make Olympic medals.

Due to the Covid-19 outbreak, the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 were postponed for the first time in their history. The Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 will now be held on 23 July 2021. This marks only the fourth time since the first modern Olympics were held in 1896 that the Games have been drastically affected by outside forces. The other three occasions were cancellations during the first and second World Wars. In simple words, this is the first time the Olympics have been postponed, rather than canceled.

"The Tokyo Olympics will not be canceled," Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters in Tokyo after a call with International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach on the matter. However, this postponement will immensely affect athletes. Their all-round preparation was aimed for 2020. Since they have a whole extra year, their last minute preparations too need to be postponed. Postponed by a year also means change of age groups (categories). All athletes will be a year older when they appear for Tokyo Games 2021. On the other hand, some athletes are looking at the situation in a positive way. USA's double Olympic swimming gold medalist, Lilly King took to Instagram and wrote, "Just one more year to get better."

There are 32 sports in total for Summer Olympics 2021, Tokyo. The Government, volunteers, coaches, athletes and media have decided to mark 2020 has a 'skip year' and aim for a more prepared and better Summer Olympics, 2021.