Opportunities to qualify for the 2021 Tokyo Olympics have been granted.
This was after the International Olympic Committee (IOC) revised the qualification deadline for the Olympiad after the Games were postponed until 2021 because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The IOC, in an announcement yesterday, said the qualification period would end on June 29, 2021.
The date will be a week before the final entry deadline of July 5.
This will be 18 days before the Olympics is slated to open on July 23.
In a separate letter to National Olympic Committees, the IOC said it hoped to finalize the adapted qualification system later this month.
“A 2021 schedule is ideal enough. I favor a postponement because the health and safety of everyone in sports—both in the Philippines and all over the world—is paramount in this Covid-19 pandemic,” said Philippine Olympic Committee president Abraham Tolentino.
The International Federations have been instructed to use their original qualification systems where possible.
There are numerous events that had been cancelled or postponed in response to the Covid-19 outbreak.
“This principle encourages IFs to follow a like-for-like approach by replacing those lost opportunities that were allocating quotas with the same number of events,” the IOC said in a statement.
The IOC said Federations will “retain full discretion to define the new ranking deadline and pathway.”
But it warned a balance “needs to be found between protecting those athletes who were close to qualifying based on the previous 2020 deadlines.
