Refugee team to take part at Tokyo 2020 Olympics: IOC

TIL Desk Sports/ Refugees will take part in the Tokyo 2020 Olympics after the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on Tuesday said it would form a refugee team for the second consecutive Summer Games. IOC President Thomas Bach asked members of the Olympic body at its session in Buenos Aires to support the creation of a refugee team, along the lines of the one that competed at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games. The members responded with applause.”So you have created the refugee Olympic team, Tokyo 2020,” Bach said.

The German said the IOC had already identified a pool of more than 50 refugee athletes and it was necessary to keep the world aware of the plight of the tens of millions of refugees around the world. “There is one unfortunate reason for the creation of this team,” Bach told a news conference. “This is the fact that the reasons we created the first ever team still persist.

We have altogether 68.5 million refugees in this world.””Through sport we want to make a contribution to keep the world aware of this problem and this challenge and that it does not disappear from the conscience of the world, and send another signal of hope to these refugees.” There were no details yet on the final size or makeup of the team but Bach said the pool of potential athletes for the team could grow more.