Tokyo will not relocate the 2020 Olympic rowing and canoe sprint competitions outside the capital to save money, the city’s governor, Yuriko Koike, has said, but volleyball could be moved to neighbouring Yokohama.
Koike has vowed to cut the cost of next summer’s Games amid warnings that the bill could rise to $30bn (£24bn) – four times the initial estimate. But on Tuesday she ruled out an earlier suggestion by her review panel to move the rowing and canoe sprints hundreds of miles north of Tokyo.
The Games’ organising committee, however, faced criticism after telling International Olympic Committee (IOC) officials it would keep costs below $20bn.
“I think we’re on the same page but let’s get this thing done,” the IOC vice-president, John Coates, told reporters after the meeting in Tokyo. “You have heard that Tokyo 2020 are putting a ceiling on the budget at this stage of $20bn. The IOC has not agreed to that amount of money. We think the Games can be delivered for significantly less than that.
“We think we’re in a good stage here, but I don’t want to let the international media have the impression that the costs of running the Games in a city like Tokyo, where you have so many existing venues, is $20bn. It is not, and there will be significant savings to be found.”
Koike, whose consideration of venue changes was criticised by the Tokyo 2020 organising committee’s president, Yoshiro Mori, confirmed that a new aquatics stadium would be built in Tokyo as planned, but with fewer seats. However, she angered organising committee members by delaying a decision on the volleyball venue until later this year.
The new aquatic centre will have 15,000 instead of 20,000seats to avoid the additional cost of reducing the venue’s capacity after the Games have ended, Koike said. The tweak will shave 17bn yen (£120m) off the venue’s original 58bn yen price tag, she added.
Speaking at a four-party meeting involving the Tokyo metropolitan government, the 2020 organising committee, the central government and the IOC, Koike said the economic environment had changed dramatically since Tokyo last hosted the summer Games in 1964.
“That was the age of the new bullet train, the metropolitan expressway and population growth,” she said. “But now, even Tokyo will suffer population decline by 2025, so we may not be able to repeat what we achieved in 1964.
“We have to bear those changes in mind when we organise the Olympics. Tokyo is undergoing reforms, and that philosophy will be our guide.”
Koike, however, finally backed the construction of a rowing and canoe sprint site, known as the Sea Forest, in Tokyo Bay after receiving assurances that building costs could be reduced and that the alternative would be too expensive.
But she urged the international rowing and canoeing federations to share the cost of building the Sea Forest with Japanese authorities.
Olympic organisers and international sports federations had made clear they opposed the proposed alternative venue of Naganuma, 250 miles (400km) north of the capital.
On the possibility of moving the volleyball tournament from Ariake in Tokyo to Yokohama, Koike said opinion polls had favoured the latter, adding, “I am aware that the clock is ticking, so I will make my final decision by Christmas.”
Coates, a former rower, said he was relieved the rowing and canoe sprint would be held in Tokyo Bay, which the sport’s officials have long insisted is the best option for athletes.
The Naganuma venue, located in a region that was badly affected by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, will instead be used as a training camp for rowing teams.
“We would have preferred a decision on the Ariake [volleyball] venue today,” Coates told Koike at the meeting, which was open to the media. “But we understand.”
Koike, who became Tokyo’s first female governor this summer, ordered a review of ballooning Olympic expenses after new estimates put the overall cost at 3tn yen, four times the estimates given in 2013 when Tokyo beat Madrid and Istanbul for the right to host the 2020 Games.
Her panel’s recommendation that rowing and other sports be shifted outside the capital angered organisers, who had promised a compact Olympics in which most of the competitions would take place within 8km of the athletes’ village.
Koike said her cost-cutting was the best way to implement the IOC’s Agenda 2020, which is designed to make the Olympics more sustainable through the greater use of existing facilities, even if they are outside the host city.
The IOC’s president, Thomas Bach, said recently that the organisation was concerned about rising costs for 2020 but that the athletes’ needs had to be given priority.
