Great Britain are unlikely to be able to send a team to Tokyo should the Olympic Games go ahead as scheduled despite the coronavirus pandemic, the chair of the British Olympic Association has warned.

Hugh Robertson welcomed the International Olympic Committee’s announcement that it is now spending the next four weeks looking at contingency scenarios following the outbreak, which include postponement.

However, he warned that due to the widespread closure of training facilities and the likelihood that the impact of coronavirus in Britain will worsen over the coming weeks, there is almost certainly no way Team GB could compete if the Games were given the green light for this summer.

“I think it is very simple. If the virus continues as predicted by the Government, I don’t think there is any way we can send a team,” he told Sky Sports News.

“And I base that on two things. Firstly, I don’t see any way that the athletes and Team GB could be ready by then.

“Elite training facilities are perfectly understandably and quite correctly closed around the country, so there is no way they could undertake the preparation they need to get ready for a Games. Second, there is the appropriateness of holding an Olympic Games at a time like this,” he added.

“We are actually in a process where we are talking to all our sports. We will complete that over the next couple of days. At the end of that we have already said to the IOC that we think their four-week pause is absolutely the right thing to do.

“We can’t see any way that this can go ahead as things are constituted at the moment and I expect we will be joining Canada and Australia shortly.”

The Canadian Olympic and Paralympic committees have already announced they will not compete in Tokyo this summer, while the Australians have told their athletes to prepare for a postponement to the summer of 2021.

The BOA, the British Paralympic Association and funding body UK Sport will hold a conference call with the chief executives and performance directors of the summer Olympic and Paralympic sports this afternoon to discuss the impact of the outbreak.

Although the British bodies may not go as far as Canada have in saying they will not send a team, there is growing anticipation that they will make a collective call for the Games to be postponed and to advise athletes to prepare on that basis.

Boris Johnson’s official spokesperson has urged the IOC to make a ‘definitive decision’.

The Prime Minister’s spokesperson said: “Athletes are facing significant uncertainty in the current environment.

“Their health and safety, alongside that of sports fans and officials due to work at the Games must be absolutely paramount.

“We want the International Olympic Committee to make a definitive decision soon to bring clarity to all of those involved.