Beijing: The Asian Games scheduled to take place in the Chinese city of Hangzhou in September has been postponed until 2023 because of the prevailing COVID-19 situation, Randhir Singh, the acting President of the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA), told Reuters on Friday. The decision to postpone the Games was taken at a OCA executive board meeting in Tashkent on Friday.
The 19th edition of the multi-sports Games, second in size only to the Summer Olympics, was scheduled to take place from September 10-25 in the capital of Zhejiang province, some 175 kilometres southwest of Shanghai. Question marks had been raised over the event taking place with Shanghai having recently been locked down because of a COVID-19 outbreak.
Hangzhou organisers said in early April that all 56 competition venues for the Games had been completed and test events were continuing as the lakeside city prepared to host more than 11,000 athletes from 44 nations and territories. Most international sporting events in China have been postponed or cancelled since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the notable exception of the Winter Olympics, which went ahead in Beijing under strict health controls in February.
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Notably, India’s Sports Minister Anurag Thakur had said last month that a call on India’s participation in the Asian Games would be taken depending on China’s assessment of the situation and its readiness to host the continental event amid the rising cases. ‘All other participating nations are discussing and in some time India will also take a decision but before that the host nation should make it clear what are they thinking and how much prepared they are’, Thakur had said.
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