International Olympic Committee member Dick Pound says athletes would be "out of your mind not to be vaccinated" before heading to Japan.
Pound told Checkpoint he has his ticket to Tokyo and unless there is some "dreadful calamity," the games will go head on July 23, albeit in a significantly modified form.
Despite growing challenges in Japan amid Covid-19, the veteran IOC member said he is convinced it is all go.
"So far I think everyone is planning on a different Olympics, but an Olympics nonetheless."
He said it would take "some hideous outbreak of some new variant that sweeps the world" to stop the event.
"But you have to have that in the back of your mind… The key consideration in the end is, is it going to be safe to go? And everything that we know now indicates that it will be safe. The vaccines are being administered all over the world, they're a little behind in Japan, but that's a different issue.
"And it's not as if we're inviting India or Brazil to Japan. You're inviting vaccinated Olympic athletes, which is a small number, relatively speaking - people who have been vaccinated and will be paying very close attention to all of the health measures."
But he acknowledged athletes do not have to get vaccinated.
"They're able to go. I think you have to be out of your mind not to be vaccinated. You're going almost to the epicentre of where all this started, and it simply makes good sense to be vaccinated, whether you'd be prepared to go or not.
"Some are because athletes are like that. They don't think any of this stuff could affect them. That's the nature of a high-performance athlete, they just remove all doubts about performance and bad things happening and and so on.
"But I think National Olympic committees, the countries from which they come, will all be encouraging as strongly as possible that they be vaccinated."
Pound said he is reluctant to make a hard rule denying unvaccinated athletes from competing,
"There could be pre-existing conditions that would make a vaccine contraindicated, or there may be religious factors at play, but that said, everybody is encouraging in the strongest possible terms to be vaccinated, and I think that's a good precaution."
Some top athletes, including tennis players Serena Williams, Naomi Osaka and Rafael Nadal they are not comfortable with the situation in Tokyo.
"I don't know whether they're going to pull out or not. I think it's not unreasonable to express concern and I hope the final decision will be based on whether or not there's a strong consensus that there's no significant risk.
"I'm not going to go until I get my second vaccine, but at the moment it looks like I will have that before heading to Japan. I have a ticket I'm hoping to use it."
Pound said going ahead with the Olympics would be a statement of resilience.
"We are not going to be brought to our knees by this, we're going to take the best possible measures to avoid infection but, to bring the world together in these difficult circumstances and then to pull off something as meaningful, complicated and complex as the Olympic Games, under these conditions, is an affirmation we can do this. We can beat this pandemic.
"Every precaution is being taken by people who are following this on a daily basis. They're relying on the best scientific knowledge as it's available, and if they don't think it's possible, it won't happen.
"But if they think it's possible, it will, and I think it should."
