Lawrence Waterman OBE, the head of health and safety for the London Olympics 2012, has called on the International Olympic Committee to postpone the 2020 games as the, “Tokyo games cannot be delivered safely for athletes, visitors or workers in Japan.”

There are currently 1,046 cases of Coronavirus reported in Japan and 41 people have died. This would make it impossible safely to set up for the games and test the new facilities. Testing events with crowds, vital to the safe running of an event on this scale is impossible with social distancing. Social distancing requirements in place amongst many competitor nations are also currently preventing athletes from training safely. 

Speaking from his home today Lawrence Waterman, who is also the Chairman of the British Safety Council, said: “These games need to be postponed, and the sooner the IOC and the Japanese government face up to this the better – it is simply not safe to put the games on during a global pandemic. People’s safety and health should come before the costs of delaying contracts.

“The London Games were the first in history to be completed without a single fatality – we set the standard on health and safety at the Olympics. Key to that is testing venues with real crowds to iron out problems – that’s simply not possible if people are to be two metres apart.” 

Waterman continued: “The coronavirus is requiring big sacrifices from us all – the IOC should be no exception and however much they want to see the red carpet rolled out for them in Tokyo the only responsible thing is to postpone the games. They should do so now.”