TOKYO: The Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics organizing committee on Friday released event schedules for the Tokyo Games, which was postponed to next year due to the coronavirus pandemic.

In the new schedules, event dates in 2021 were basically moved up by one day from the original dates in 2020 to keep them on the same days of the week.

Meanwhile, the venues for all 33 sports in the Olympics, as well as the athletes’ village and the media center, are set to be kept unchanged, although venue usage fees and other issues remain to be settled.

With the schedules and venues decided, the organizing committee will start this autumn refunds of tickets for the initially planned Olympic events.

According to the new schedules, the Tokyo Olympics will start with a softball match between Japan and Australia in the northeastern Japan city of Fukushima on July 21, 2021, two days before the opening ceremony.

Among high-profile athletic events, the men’s 100-meter final is scheduled for the evening on Aug. 1, and the men’s 400-meter relay final for the evening on Aug. 6.

The women’s and men’s marathons will be held in the northern city of Sapporo from 7 a.m. on Aug. 7 and 8, respectively.

The baseball, men’s soccer and men’s basketball finals are concentrated on Saturday, Aug. 7.

JIJI Press