The Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games have been postponed until next year because of the worldwide coronavirus pandemic. The event, due to begin on 24 July, will now take place “no later than summer 2021”. “I proposed to postpone for a year and [IOC] president Thomas Bach responded with 100% agreement,” said Shinzo Abe, Japan’s Prime Minister. The event will still be called Tokyo 2020 despite taking place in 2021.
Two footballers – Super Eagles forward Dayo Ojo and Abia Comets’ Benjamin Iluyomade – have been kidnapped while driving on the Benin-Owo expressway in Nigeria. The pair were travelling from Akure on a break, as the Nigerian league is currently suspended amidst the coronavirus pandemic. A team-mate of Ojo’s from his club side Enyimba, Emmanuel James, was also in the car, but escaped.
Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta says he has fully recovered from coronavirus. Spaniard Arteta, 37, became the first Premier League manager to test positive for the virus on 12 March. He had reported feeling unwell after it was confirmed Evangelos Marinakis – the owner of Greek side Olympiakos, who played Arsenal in the Europa League in February – had coronavirus on 10 March. Arteta said: “It took me three or four days to start feeling better, with more energy, to leave the symptoms behind.”
World Athletics president Lord Coe has called for this summer’s Olympic Games in Tokyo to be postponed. In a letter to International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach, Coe says that an Olympics in July 2020 is “neither feasible or desirable” because of the coronavirus crisis. The IOC has given itself four weeks to decide on the future of the 2020 Games.
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