The Subtle Art of Hosting a Postponed Olympics

Abstract

Tokyo 2020 became the first postponed game in the Olympics history. In this article, we discuss how various stakeholders of Olympic Committee worked with the host Country to successfully conduct a multi-billion dollar event in midst of a pandemic. We start the article by discussing the standard route of winning the proposal and subsequent planning that went for a decade prior to organizing the event. Then we discuss how the entire plan went for a toss due to the postponement of the event to 2021, which led to the formation of Here-We-Go Task-force and eventually mitigating the risks using the Tokyo-Model. Finally, we summarize the key lessons learnt from this postponement and how it developed a robust blueprint for future Olympics hosting countries.