For those who still doubted it, the meeting of the IOC Executive Board on Monday June 8 provided further proof: Agenda 2020 will not remain a dead letter. Its resolutions have the force of law today. Starting with that of a reduction in the cost of the Olympic Games. In Tokyo, host city of the Summer Olympics in 2020, reality goes beyond fiction.
Meeting since Monday June 8 in Lausanne, the IOC Executive Commission looked at length at the plan for the venues for the Tokyo Games. To finally accept, without a shadow of hesitation, a new configuration of the Olympic system, now increasingly distant from the initial project. In Tokyo in 2020, the Games will only remotely resemble the version presented by Japan on the day of the election by the IOC General Assembly. The two other candidate cities, Madrid and Istanbul, could harbor some bitterness.
A first so-called “revised” plan was accepted by the IOC last February. It saved the Japanese a billion dollars. Monday June 8, the members of the executive commission ratified a second one, only slightly less spectacular. Result: a new saving of 700 million dollars.
This second revision concerns seven sports. Their sites will be relocated, sometimes quite far from Tokyo, to reduce construction and cut the budget. Fencing, wrestling and taekwondo will be relocated to the Makuhari Messe convention center. Rugby 7s will see its matches organized in the Tokyo stadium. Sailing will take place in the Enoshima marina, where the regattas of the 1964 Games took place. The badminton events will be moved to the Musashino Forest sports center, currently under construction, which will also host the pentathlon. modern during the 2020 Games. Finally, water polo will also have to look elsewhere, at the Tatsumi swimming center.
On paper, the IOC's decision is justified. It would have been misunderstood to deny the Japanese a cost reduction, just six months after the adoption of Agenda 2020 where budgetary prudence is elevated as a priority. But Tokyo had promised the members of the Olympic institution, and by extension the entire movement, extremely compact Games. The venues all had to be set up within an 8 km radius of the athletes' village. A promise today sent to oblivion.
Fencing, wrestling and taekwondo will take place a good forty kilometers from the center of Tokyo. The same distance must be covered by competitors in sailing events to reach the competition water. An identical scenario threatens track cycling. Japanese organizers are considering moving the events to Izu, in a velodrome already built. As a cost-saving measure, once again. But the UCI and its president, the Briton Brian Cookson, are slowing down. The Izu velodrome is located an hour by train from Tokyo. Disturbing prospect.
Another thorny question: the Olympic stadium. Its construction has not yet started, but it is the subject of numerous controversies. Designed by Zaha Hadid, the architect of the aquatic center for the London Games, it was initially planned to be equipped with a retractable roof and have 80.000 seats. Too expensive, said the Japanese authorities. The roof has been removed from the project and a good third of the seats will only be temporary.
The Japanese Minister of Sports, Hakubun Shimomura, assured this Tuesday, June 9 that the Tokyo National Stadium, where the ceremonies and athletics events are planned, will be ready on time. Its construction will even be completed for the Rugby World Cup in 2019, organized in Japan. “We will be ready,” he says. We will not lose the trust of the rest of the world. " To have.
