John Coates was in Tokyo for a two-day IOC project review meeting this week.GETTY IMAGES
IOC Coordination Commission Chair John Coates said that planning for Tokyo 2020 "has been made harder because of the high disaster risks in Japan, a reality hammered home by a deadly typhoon and earthquake just last week," according to Elaine Lies of REUTERS. Western Japan last week was hit by "the strongest typhoon to strike the nation in 25 years," and then just days later by an earthquake that "paralyzed" the northernmost main island of Hokkaido and left roughly 40 dead. Coates admitted that the two disasters were "a bit of a reality check about the planning difficulties for what are already extremely complex Games due to the largest number of sports and events ever." He said, "What happened last week and what happened in Osaka certainly have hit home to me, and I know the Organizing Committee, about the further complexity of planning these Games." He added that he knows organizers are "taking the issue seriously and factoring it into their planning and scheduling" (REUTERS, 9/12).
SAYONARA, SAPPORO: KYODO reported Sapporo, Japan, intends to tell the IOC next week that it "plans to give up bidding for the Winter Olympics" in '26, a source familiar with the matter said, "with the city now aiming to stage the Games" in '30. Sapporo, which hosted the 1972 Winter Olympics, has been asking for the extension of the Hokkaido Shinkansen Line to the city earlier than the currently planned spring of '31 and "hopes to build infrastructure for the Olympics in line with the bullet train project," the source added. Sapporo Deputy Mayor Takatoshi Machida is expected to brief IOC President Thomas Bach about its withdrawal from the '26 bid in a meeting on Monday (KYODO, 9/13).
