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Seb Coe says athletes currently qualified for the Olympics will keep their spots

Good news for all those who have already qualified for the Tokyo Olympics: You're in for 2021.

Olympic officials have confirmed that the 6,200 or so athletes who had already punched their ticket for Tokyo will keep their spots for the rescheduled Games next year.

It resolves one of the key questions for marathoners, open-water swimmers and hundreds of other athletes whose qualifying process came early in the 2020 sports calendar, before the coronavirus started shutting down sports across the globe.

Still to be determined is how the sports that make up the Olympics will allocate all the spots at the rescheduled Games. Typically, the individual sports determine their qualifying procedures for Olympic events.

World Athletics president Seb Coe confirmed that all sports have agreed to the IOC's proposal that all athletes currently qualified for the Olympics will remain qualified for next year.

In track, he said that accounts for about half the places. He said the important next step is to develop a fair process for the rest of the athletes, most of whom have seen their qualifying events postponed.

"It is clear that those athletes who have qualified for the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 remain qualified," said IOC president Thomas Bach on Sunday via statement. "This is a consequence of the fact that these Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, in agreement with Japan, will remain the Games of the XXXII Olympiad."