(ATR) IOC vice president John Coates tells Around the Rings he will visit Japan in the coming weeks to provide guidance with tendering a new national stadium for Tokyo 2020.
"It looks like I will go there in the next week or so. I’ve been invited by Mr. Endo because during both the executive board and the [IOC] session we impressed that we wanted the organizing committee to be involved in the new tender and we wanted the opportunity for the IOC to be involved, particularly our Olympic broadcast services division," Coates tells ATR.
"We want to make sure it’s ready by April 2020 and that our television people have access to it before then. We also want to make sure for their sake the creative people who are doing the ceremonies have access to it before then," Coates says.
Original national stadium designs were scrapped by the Japanese government two weeks ago over concerns of ballooning construction costs. The pressure is now on for the organizing committee to come up with a new stadium design and begin construction as soon as possible.
Coates says the organizing committee wants to begin construction in the first quarter of 2016. He says they will likely tender a design by the end of this year.
"The design has to be excellent to ensure an excellent field of play for the athletes and all of the spectators. However, these days with Agenda 2020 the cost implications outweigh any design," he says.
The national stadium design change is the latest in venue changes coming from Tokyo 2020. The original bid plan venues and locations have been changed in an effort to reduce costs and improve sustainability.
"As far as the shuffling of the venues, I don’t think that will happen to the same extent because we have now introduced the invitation phase under our bidding process where cities contemplating bidding can come in and talk to our experts and say ‘these are the venues we’ve got, this is what we’re looking at doing,’ and we’ll have the opportunity to say ‘well have you thought of using that same venue for two sports?’", Coates tells ATR.
Tokyo 2020 is also the first Olympics where the organizers can submit a proposal to add new sports to the program. Eight federations gave presentations to Tokyo 2020 on Friday but only a few could be added to the program.
"We’ve given them a guide so they shouldn’t be proposing more than a combination of events and sports that would bring it to more than 500 athletes," Coates says.
"They’ve certainly got the message from us that this is not only to be a selection of sports to engage the Japanese people but will engage the worldwide audience and particularly young people. That’s very important to us," he says.
On top of giving them an athlete quota, the IOC has provided organizers with questions and criteria to evaluate each federation and make their decision. Coates says the IOC has encouraged Tokyo 2020 to make a business plan for each of the sports in order to help them evaluate the best option for their program.
Written by Kevin Nutley
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