The Tokyo Olympics will definitely go ahead on 23 July confirms John Coates, chair of the IOC Coordination Commission.
He was speaking as the countdown reached 100 days to go before the opening ceremony. “I have no hesitation in saying that the Games will take place and they’ll be the safest Games possible,” Coates said. “All of the countermeasures have been put in place to deal with Covid to ensure that the public, the athletes and all the other participants are safe. They will take place as scheduled.”
Officials in Tokyo are refining the details of those countermeasures. Christophe Dubi, Olympic Games executive director, says: “The playbook will establish everything we as participants will have to follow as measures to safeguard the health of oneself, but also all the others. So, more precision in the playbooks coming up. And the second thing is to test, test and test. The teams have to be ready to face those Covid-19 countermeasure operations, but also to operate the Games. So the next 100 days will be about refining all the details and testing, training the teams.”
So far, Team GB is sending three Olympic Trap shooters to the Olympics: Kirsty Hegarty, Matt Coward-Holley and Aaron Heading.
In March, Amber Hill won an Olympic Skeet quota place for Team GB with a stunning world record score, taking gold at the ISSF New Delhi World Cup. “Hopefully I’ve now secured my spot on the plane for Tokyo,” she says.
The games will run from 23 July to 8 August 2021, and the first medals will be awarded in the women’s 10m air rifle event on 24 July. The Skeet events begin the following day, 25 July, with finals on the 26th. Trap shooting runs from 28 to 31 July.
See the full schedule of shooting events on the Tokyo 2020 website.
Follow the news from British Shooting at BritishShooting.org.uk
