Tokyo getting ready for action
ALMOST one year before the opening of the Tokyo Olympics, organizers recently showed journalists around the main stadium for the 2020 Games, proudly saying it is 90 per cent finished despite past controversies.
The National Stadium, designed by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, is scheduled to be completed by the end of November.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe decided in 2015 to scrap the initial futuristic design awarded to late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid as the cost had soared.
At least concerns over the stadium are dispelled when tomorrow marks one year until the opening ceremony of the Olympics.
“It’s really a great excitement and I’m really looking forward to this one-year-to-go for two reasons,” International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach said.
“One is that the organizing committee has done a great job in preparing the Games, and secondly to see how the Japanese people are uniting behind the Games,” Bach said.
The 2020 Games will be held to August 9, followed by the Paralympics from August 25 to September 6. It is the first to be hosted in Japan in 56 years.
In 1964 the Tokyo Olympics were held in the much-cooler month of October. However, the organizing committee in the capital considers the extreme heat and typhoons a “major issue” during the 2020 Games.
Just a year ago, a record-breaking heatwave swept across Japan for nearly two weeks before the arrival of typhoons with temperatures reaching record highs.
The number of those who died of heatstroke and other heat-related causes in July 2018 more than tripled from a year earlier to 1 032, including 127 in Tokyo, according to data from the health ministry and Tokyo’s city government.
In Tokyo alone, a total of 7 449 people were taken by ambulance to hospital due to heatstroke in July and August last year and the figure was larger than any other prefecture in Japan, showed a report from the Fire and Disaster Management Agency.
The extreme heat prompted the organizing committee to change the starting times of some outdoor events. The men’s and women’s marathons were pushed back one hour to 6am to alleviate the heat.
Meanwhile, about 3.2 million tickets were snapped up in the first round of ticket sales for the Olympics, organizers said earlier this month.
In August, hundreds of thousands of tickets will be sold in the second lottery.