The International Olympic Committee has confirmed that Russian athletes will compete as Individual Neutral Athletes at next year’s Milan-Cortina Winter Games.

Yuriko Koike, right, meets Tokyo 2020 President Yoshiro Mori at Tokyo Metropolitan Government headquarters in Tokyo Monday, July 6, 2020. (Kyodo News via AP)TOKYO As the president of the Tokyo Olympics, Yoshiro Mori knows that experts will have to come up with defenses against COVID-19 for the the postponed games to open a year from now. Add to this 4,400 Paralympic athletes and thousands of staff members, technical officials, and Olympic officials. We have these kind of problems.In addition to talks with Mori a former prime minister Koike also met with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Monday. In an interview last month, Olympic Games operations director Pierre Ducrey was optimistic the games would be held.