When the Japanese Olympic Committee set a target of winning 30 gold medals at the 2020 Tokyo Games, it probably didn't factor a pandemic or a one-year postponement into its projections.
The world is a very different place than it was on June 5, 2018, when the JOC stated its goal of smashing the nation's previous record of 16 golds, a mark achieved at the 1964 Summer Games in Tokyo and again in Athens in 2004.
The competition schedule was originally slated to begin this month with a softball game between Japan and Australia on July 22. Now things won't kick off until a year later, when the same teams meet on July 21, 2021, two days before the rescheduled opening ceremony. The new end date for the Olympics is Aug. 8, 2021.