We thought she was buried for good. Taken to the depths by the corruption scandal of the Tokyo 2020 Games. But Sapporo's candidacy for the Winter Games in 2030 is still breathing. She might even have found the beginnings of a second wind.
According to NHK, authorities in the capital of Hokkaido Prefecture are still working on the case. But they chose to give it a more transparent, and above all more open, dimension to avoid reliving the dark soap opera after the Tokyo 2020 Games.
A new " management plan » of the Olympic project was prepared by the teams from the city of Sapporo. It was submitted, Tuesday, October 3, to a panel of experts for examination and validation. The approach was followed, the same day, by a press conference by the mayor of Sapporo, Akimoto Katsuhiro. Re-elected last April for a third term, he has never abandoned his Olympic project.
The new management plan unveiled this week does not disrupt the genre. But it proposes an approach to the organization of the Games that breaks with the model displayed by Tokyo 2020, with a formula presumed to be less permeable to attempts at corruption.
At the top of the list of proposed changes: marketing. Sapporo 2030 suggests entrusting the operation to a handful of agencies, and no longer just one as for Tokyo 2020, where Dentsu served as an interface between the organizing committee and partner companies. By expanding the number of players, Sapporo hopes to guard against the risk of bribes.
The new plan also provides for discussions between marketing service providers and future sponsors to be supervised by the organizing committee.
Another new feature: tighter and less masculine management. In its new version, the Sapporo 2030 file proposes to halve the number of directors of the organizing committee. It also suggests gender parity for management positions.
At this stage, the new management plan for the Japanese application is in the hands of the panel of independent experts. Local authorities want to finalize all the details by the end of October.
Akimoto Katsuhiro, the city's mayor, confirmed it at a press conference: Sapporo 2030 wants to take inspiration from Tokyo 2020 to propose a more virtuous and less opaque organizational model. Above all, he assured that the project was still alive.
Can the Japanese get back into the race? Difficult to answer. But this week's announcement suggests that they were probably never removed, despite their desire to put their project on an extended hiatus. Last spring, the IOC said it was in discussions with “ six regions » interested in hosting the Winter Games. But without naming them, or specifying whether their interest was in the 2030 edition or one of the following ones. Obviously, Sapporo is on the list.
Against all expectations, the Sapporo authorities can count on support from the population who are clearly recovering. A survey carried out last June by Jiji Press revealed that 60% of Japanese – and 50% of residents of Hokkaido prefecture – said they were in favor of bidding for the 2030 Winter Games. Two months earlier, an opinion survey by the daily Asahi Shimbun had a support rate of only 38% in the prefecture.
One unknown remains: the position of the Japanese Olympic Committee (JOC). Very associated with the project for a long time, he turned away from it after the revelations of the Tokyo 2020 Games scandal. Its president, former judoka Yasuhiro Yamashita, explained it without tongue in cheek at the end of last June, on the evening of his re-election for a second term: “ In the current circumstances, winning the 2030 edition will be difficult. »
