Tokyo marathon postponed to March 2022 due to COVID-19 restrictions

Tokyo: The Tokyo marathon has been postponed to March next year, organisers said Friday, blaming COVID-19 and ongoing restrictions in the Japanese capital. Japan has seen the number of infections decline following a record spike last month, which prompted the government to expand and extended virus restrictions, despite the national vaccination programme ramping up. “The Tokyo Marathon 2021 will be postponed to Sunday, 6 March, 2022,” the Tokyo Marathon Foundation said in a statement, citing “the difficulty to forecast the trend of Covid-19”. The race, originally set to take place earlier this year in March with around 38,000 runners including top athletes participating, had already been postponed to October. “Even only a month away from the event, Tokyo is still under a state of emergency,” organisers said, adding next year’s marathon will be cancelled. The 2020 Tokyo marathon was held in March with a reduced field of around 200 elite runners. The postponement comes after Formula 1 announced in August the cancellation of October’s Japanese Grand Prix for a second year due to the pandemic.