Retired Japanenese judo athlete Kaori Yamaguchi, who is also a member of her country's Olympic Committee executive board, has lashed out at the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for putting athletes at risk instead of opting for the postponement of the Tokyo Games 2020.
In an interview to a Japanese news outlet, the 55-year-old former athlete said that the Olympics Games in Tokyo should not be held as sheduled at a time when people are not in a position to enjoy it fully.
"Unlike other sporting events, the Olympics symbolize the ideal that sports bring about world peace.We should not hold (the Olympics) if people across the world can't enjoy themselves," the USA Today quoted Yamaguchi as saying.
Yamaguchi's comments came after the athletes were asked to continue to train as usual by IOC president Thomas Bach and the entire committee despite the deadly coronavirus outbreak that has spread all over the world and was recently termed as 'pandemic' by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Yamaguchi, who is one of the 23 executive board members of the Japanese Olympic committe, further said that she is looking forward to put her stance in front of the rest of her country's Olympic Committee in a meeting on March 27.
Earlier,Japanese Olympic Committee vice president Kozo Tashima had also called for the postponement of the Olympic Games 2020 due to COVID-19--which has claimed the lives of more than 9,000 people across the world and affected more than 2,00,000 people.
On Thursday, IOC chief Thomas Bach had stated that it is too early to decide the fate of the Tokyo Games amid the ongoing coronavirus fear.
His comments came during a two-hour teleconference, which was attended by about 200 representatives from the international federations, athletes and Athletes Commissions of related Olympic organising committees.
On March 12, the flame for the Tokyo Olympics 2020 was lit in a torch lighting ceremony held in ancient Olympia in Greece behind closed doors after the country registered its first death from coronavirus.
The 2020 Tokyo Games is slated to take place from July 24 to August 9.
