Yomiuri: Tokyo readies for IOC visit / Evaluation team to hear details of Olympic bid next week
The Tokyo metropolitan government and the invitation committee for the 2016 Summer Olympic Games are now in the final stages of preparing for a four-day visit by the International Olympic Committee's Evaluation Commission that kicks off next Thursday. The commission--which comprises 13 people, including IOC members and a financial expert--completed Tuesday a visit to Chicago to evaluate that city's proposal to host the Olympics. The commission will visit the other two candidates, Rio de Janeiro and Madrid, after the Tokyo trip. The commission will evaluate the suitability of each candidate city to host the Olympics and submit a report to the IOC that will be made public sometime around September. The report will play an important part in deciding which city is awarded the Games--the successful city will be announced in October.
Tension is rising within the metropolitan government and the Tokyo 2016 Bid Committee as the evaluation commission's visit approaches. "In terms of winning the Olympic bid, we've absolutely no margin for error during the evaluation commission's visit," a metropolitan government official said. On Saturday, officials from the bid committee and a U.S. consultancy firm gathered at a tent erected on the planned site of the main stadium in Harumi, Chuo Ward, Tokyo. The purpose of the gathering -- the details of which were not made public -- was to rehearse guiding evaluation commission members to stadiums and other venues. The officials of the consultancy firm stood in for the evaluation commission.
Standing on the vast site, bid committee members explained plans for the main stadium to the consultancy firm officials while other officials kept time with a stopwatch. About 30 minutes later, everyone got onto a bus bound for the next site. Frayed nerves were evident during the rehearsal, with one bid committee member saying to his boss in a serious voice, "We're behind schedule." The evaluation commission's travel plans for moving between stadiums will not be made public. However, a senior official of the metropolitan government expressed confidence in the chosen route. "We've planned everything to let the evaluation commission understand the advantages that Tokyo holds over other candidate cities," he said.
One plus point for Tokyo is that most of the stadiums and venues are located within a radius of about eight kilometers around the main stadium. About 70 percent of the athletes will be able to reach their respective stadiums within 10 minutes of leaving the Olympic village, according to the bid committee. The committee said it has chosen a route that will ensure the commission team moves smoothly between the stadiums. The time required for each journey has been calculated to the last second, a committee member said. However, the evaluation commission is due to travel to the stadiums on Friday, a day normally associated with heavy traffic. An official of the metropolitan government said: "Traffic jams always occur on Fridays. We also need to consider the possibility of unforeseen jams due to traffic accidents."
Though the bid committee boasts that the 2016 Olympics would be the most compact Games ever if Tokyo gets the nod, if the evaluation commission runs into unexpected delays, it could undermine the feasibility of Tokyo's plan and ultimately scupper the entire bid. The metropolitan government will dispatch a car to run ahead of the bus carrying the evaluation commission to search for potential traffic jams. If problems are detected, the bus will immediately take a prepared alternative route. During the visit, the members of the evaluation commission will be taken to a hotel in Tokyo where they will hear the full details of the city's bid for the Games. The metropolitan government will spend about 200 million yen playing host to the commission and plans to place 50,000 flags depicting the Olympic mark along roads scheduled to be used by the committee's bus. The metropolitan government said it also wants to convey Japanese culture to members of the evaluation commission. The Imperial Palace and Ryogoku Kokugikan will be among sites that the members will visit, the metropolitan government said.
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