Baku Olympic Bid Develops; Tokyo 2020 Touts Fun Runs

Azerbaijan Marks Sports Day, Baku Olympic Bid Develops

A biting wind mixed with some rain and snow offered some challenge to the hearty souls who turned out to celebrate the annual Sport and Youth Holiday in Baku, Azerbaijan.

The celebration for 2012 included football, volleyball and karate at a park in the city center.

"It’s a way we recognize certain professions or activities like sport," Azerbaijan Sports Minister Azad Rahimov tells Around the Rings.

"It’s not a day off from work, but a good chance to improve something, work on something, get people together," says the minister.

"It’s also Youth Day, too, very important with 65 percent of our population under 35 years of age," he added.

Events set for the morning in Baku (which is said to mean "Windy City") were moved to the afternoon when the blustery weather subsided.

Rahimov says the day ofsports and youth has been celebrated before Baku first launched efforts in 2007 to bid for the 2016 Olympics. The Azeri capital, one of five current applicants in the field for 2020, was cut from the 2016 race by the IOC for the final stage of bidding, a fate Baku hopes to avoid this May. That’s when the IOC may edit a field that also includes Doha, Istanbul, Madrid and Tokyo.

"I think this time we will make it," Rahimov says with confidence.

"We learned a lot from the IOC evaluation [for 2016] and we have made improvements," he says, suggesting that the plan being presented by Baku for 2020 is more compact and yields greater legacy.

Rahimov says next month’s general assembly in Moscow for the Association of National Olympic Committees will be a majorstep for the Baku bid. The five cities in the 2020 race will each get 10 minutes to state their case to the ANOC Assembly, a chance Baku did not get in the 2016 race.

"This could be life-changing for Baku," says Rahimov about the impact the Games would have on this city of two million.

"Yes we can. We are strong, we are economically stable. We believe," he says.

Fashionable Tokyo Run

A 10km fun run for women was staged in Tokyo’s Omotesandofashion district, which Tokyo 2020 says shows Japan’s passion for sport.

According to the bid, "no less than 4,000 female runners" took to the street Sunday for the Shibuya Omotesando Women’s Run.

"The Shibuya Omotesando Women’s Marathon is a vivid example of the remarkable presence of women in sports. Japanese women themselves have a long record of accomplishment, crowned most recently by their victory in the last FIFA Women’s World Cup," said Tokyo 2020 CEO Masato Mizuno.

The women’s race was augmented by a 1 km family run as well as 1 km and 2 km kids’ runs "to encourage wide participation and remind us all that sport is a rewarding and exhilarating pastime for everyone," Tokyo 2020 said in a statement.

Reported in Baku by Ed Hula.

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