Tokyo to propose moving more venues for Olympics

Kenya’s Oly team leader charged

TOKYO, Sept 28, (Agencies): Tokyo’s original plans for a compact Olympics in 2020 continue to fall by the wayside.

A Tokyo government panel is set to propose moving more venues outside of the city — including hundreds of kilometers (miles) away — in order to save money, the latest in a series of changes since the Japanese capital was awarded the games three years ago.

Among the venues being reviewed are those for volleyball, swimming, rowing and canoe sprint, Kyodo news agency reported Wednesday.

Public broadcaster NHK said the panel would propose moving rowing and canoeing to Tome City, about 440 kms (270 miles) northeast of Tokyo in the prefecture of Miyagi. Tome was one of several cities severely affected by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. The city is approximately 70 kms (45 miles) north of Sendai, which is a three-hour train ride from Tokyo.

Details of the proposed changes are expected to be made public Thursday at a meeting of a taskforce for metropolitan government reform.

The changes would require approval of the International Olympic Committee and the individual international sports federations.

The government panel was set up earlier this month by Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike, who is determined to reduce the soaring costs.

Tokyo won the right to host the games in 2013 by promising a compact bid with 28 of the 31 competition venues within an eight-kilometer (5-mile) radius of the Olympic Village. Originally, only shooting, modern pentathlon and one football venue were to be outside the eightkilometer radius.

Already, venues for basketball, taekwondo and cycling have been moved outside of Tokyo to maximize existing facilities. Cycling was moved to Izu, some 145 kms (90 miles) southwest of the capital.

Tokyo organizing committee president Yoshiro Mori acknowledged in July that the cost of building seven temporary venues for the Olympics had surged to an estimated $2.6 billion, up from an initial estimate of $690 million.

Mori said the original figures were the result of sloppy calculations which he blamed on the Tokyo metropolitan government and the Japanese Olympic Committee.

The organizing committee hasn’t disclosed an official estimate of the overall costs but has acknowledged it will be considerably higher than the $3.5 billion that was forecast in the bid.

Preparations for the games have been plagued by a series of scandals involving the new national stadium, the official logo and allegations of bribery in the bidding process.

Work on the new national stadium has fallen behind schedule because the government abandoned an original design amid spiraling costs. The total costs for staging the Olympics are shared by the organizing committee, the Tokyo municipal government and the national government.

Kenya’s team leader at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics stole $256,000 from government and sports authorities meant for the athletes’ and officials’ stay at the games, prosecutors alleged in court on Wednesday.

Stephen Arap Soi, Kenya’s chef de mission at the Olympics last month, denied five counts of stealing money.

Prosecutors said he took $234,000 with him on a flight to Brazil without declaring it to customs officials, and which then went missing, and stole the remaining $22,000 in smaller amounts on separate occasions.

The money belonged to the National Olympic Committee of Kenya, Athletics Kenya, or the sports ministry, prosecutors said.

Two other officials, Kenyan Olympic committee vice president Pius Ochieng and secretary general Francis Kinyili Paul, appeared alongside Soi in a Nairobi court, and denied charges of stealing Olympic team uniforms provided by sponsor Nike.

Prosecutors this week dropped charges against a fourth Kenyan Olympic official, treasurer Fridah Shiroya. Shiroya is expected to be a state witness who will testify against Soi, Ochieng, and Paul.

The Olympic case is the latest in a long line of scandals for Kenyan sport, and particularly athletics, which has seen a barrage of doping cases involving athletes, and allegations of wrongdoing by senior officials.

Senior officials at both the Olympic committee and the athletics federation are accused of corruption, and the Olympic committee was disbanded by government because of the Rio scandal. The International Olympic Committee has given Kenya until the end of the year to reform its Olympic body or it could face a ban.

Soi

Add Michael Phelps’ name to the list of Americans who were less than amused by teammate Ryan Lochte’s post-competition, early morning drunken antics at the Rio Olympics.

“I did have a talk with him about two days before about not doing anything bad,” said Phelps, who retired after the Summer Games as the mostdecorated Olympian of all time. “I told him, ‘Just keep your head on straight. Have fun.”

Apparently, the warning didn’t take. Lochte and three teammates got into a scrape with a security at a gas station in Rio de Janeiro after a night of partying. He originally claimed he and young teammates Gunnar Bentz, Jack Conger and Jimmy Feigen were threatened and robbed at gunpoint but was later charged in Brazil with filing a false police report.

Lochte, 32, whose 12 medals and six golds make him the second-most decorated Olympic swimmer, was banned from competition for 10 months — including a chance to qualify for next summer’s world championships — by the US Olympic Committee and USA Swimming.

A May 15, 2015, file photo, Ryan Lochte (left), and Michael Phelps talk before the start of the 100-meter butterfly final at the Arena Pro Swim

Series meet in Charlotte, NC. (AP)