The Olympic Games in Tokyo will start on July 23 next year and run until August 8 after being postponed for a year because of the Covid-19 pandemic.The International Olympic Committee’s executive board made the decision yesterday.The Games will still be called Tokyo 2020, while the Paralympic Games, which was scheduled to start on August 24, will be held between August 24 and September 5 next year.Thomas Bach, the IOC president, said: “I am confident that, working together with the Tokyo 2020 Organising Committee, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, the Japanese Government and all our stakeholders, we can master this unprecedented challenge. “Humankind currently finds itself in a dark tunnel. These Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 can be a light at the end of this tunnel.”The World Athletics Championships, which was due to take place in Oregon, United States, from August 6 and August 15, 2021, will now be postponed until 2022.The Olympics had never been delayed in their 124-year modern history, but were cancelled in 1916, 1940 and 1944 because of the two world wars.