Olympics: Tokyo plans 2020 bid

Tokyo should host the 2020 Summer Olympics as a boost to Japan's quake and tsunami recovery, the city's governor said Friday, suggesting that rebuilt disaster zones could hold some events. Shintaro Ishihara said another Tokyo Olympics since the 1964 Games would demonstrate Japan's revival after the March 11 catastrophe and "repay the friendship and encouragement extended from around the world". The governor's comments to the city assembly were the most formal announcement yet of his intention to bid for the Olympics less than two years after Tokyo lost out to Rio de Janeiro as the 2016 host. Speaking later to the media, he said that the coastal disaster zones northeast of Tokyo may be able to host some Olympic events, if approved by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). "It is up to discussions with the IOC," he said. "We may be able to show at the venues in pictures what the areas looked like nine years earlier, and how they are now." Japan Olympic Committee (JOC) president Tsunekazu Takeda welcomed Ishihara's comments, saying: "We have high expectations that the Tokyo metropolitan government will formally decide on its candidacy." The JOC chief said his organisation was due to make a final decision on the candidate from Japan after receiving a formal application from Tokyo. It is expected to name the candidate city in mid-July. Ishihara, a famously outspoken 78-year-old novelist-turned-politician, threw a barb at his country's Olympic committee, suggesting they shared the blame for Japan's defeat in the last round. "The JOC itself needs to be reorganised a lot as it will have to deal in a kind of international politics ... It's no good if it remains the pampered team that it is now," he said. Tokyo is Japan's only contender after Hiroshima, hit by an atomic bomb at the end of World War II, abandoned its own bid this month due to lack of public support and a shortage of funds. Ishihara also told the metropolitan government assembly: "I strongly hope that Japan will be united as one behind the bid." "I hope the citizens and the people of the nation will consider inviting the Olympics again to Tokyo by scrumming together with the disaster zones and the whole of Japan." Tokyo hosted the 1964 Summer Games as the first Asian Olympics host. Candidates for 2020 must submit their bids to the IOC by September 1 and the host city will be chosen in Buenos Aires in September 2013. Rome, Istanbul, Doha and South Korea's Busan are among the cities which have signalled their interest in bidding to host the 2020 event. Ishihara, who was re-elected to a fourth term in April, also urged the national government to revive Japan's economy which, he said was "destined to default in three years" without drastic measures. In late 2009, Tokyo lost the 2016 bid after spending some 15 billion yen ($180 million) on a plan that would see it stage a compact and "green" Olympics by reducing carbon emissions from Games-related projects and operations. Tokyo reserved 400 billion yen for construction of venues and infrastructure and the fund has been kept intact for a possible future bid. Ishihara's critics have taken him to task over the failed bid, but he has never given up his Olympic dream. When he was re-elected he said the Olympics would be a "big catalyst as reconstruction and revival", and last month he said "I still think we'd better not extinguish the flame of the torch."