Next year's Tokyo Marathon will be rescheduled from March to the fall due to concerns over the coronavirus pandemic, sources close to the matter said Wednesday.
The Tokyo Marathon Foundation, the road race's organizer, will hold a board meeting on Friday to grant official approval for the decision, which is expected to include allowing some 38,000 general entrants to participate.
According to the sources, the foundation abandoned the planned date of March 7 amid uncertainty over whether the pandemic would be contained in time and opted instead to hold the marathon after next summer's rescheduled Tokyo Olympics.
Organizers are aiming to hold the 2022 edition in March, around the time the race is usually held in the Japanese capital.
This year's Tokyo Marathon was restricted to elite competitors in response to the coronavirus outbreak. General entrants excluded from the race were given automatic entry to next year's event or the 2022 event.
The Tokyo Marathon is one of the six World Marathon Majors. This year's races in Boston, Berlin, Chicago and New York have all been canceled, while last weekend's London Marathon featured only elite runners after being postponed from April.
