Tokyo Olympic board member would support another delay

An govt board member of the Tokyo Olympic organizing committee says one other delay needs to be sought if the video games can’t be held subsequent yr.

The Tokyo Olympics had been to be held this yr however had been postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic. The suggestion comes from Haruyuki Takahashi in an interview revealed Tuesday within the Japanese sports activities newspaper Nikkan Sports.

“The main priority is to make a united effort to hold them (Olympics) in the summer of 2021,” Takahashi stated.

He stated if that’s not attainable “we should start action once again to get another delay.”

Estimates in Japan counsel the one-year delay will value $2 billion to $6 billion, most of which can fall to Japanese taxpayers.

International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach and native organizing committee President Yoshiro Mori have each dominated out one other delay and have stated the video games shall be canceled if they’ll’t open on July 23, 2021.

Takahashi has been intimately tied to the Tokyo Games.

He’s reported to have acquired thousands and thousands of {dollars} from the Tokyo bid committee for his work lobbying IOC members when Tokyo was chosen in 2013 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, forward of Madrid and Istanbul.

Takahashi is a former worker of the enormous Japanese promoting company Dentsu, Inc., which has been credited with serving to Tokyo land the Olympics. Dentsu is the unique advertising company for the Tokyo Olympics and has been pivotal in lining up a file $3.Three billion in native sponsorships.

A French investigation has touched on Dentsu’s position in touchdown the Olympics, together with lobbying Lamine Diack. Diack was an IOC member when Tokyo was awarded the Olympics and can be a former head of the world governing physique of observe and subject, World Athletics.

Diack is on trial in Paris on corruption expenses which can be separate from alleged vote-buying in 2013. The vote-buying allegations compelled the resignation final yr of Tsunekazu Takeda, the president of the Japanese Olympic Committee.