TOKYO: Tokyo has little choice but to accept an International Olympic Committee (IOC) move to shift the 2020 marathon to a cooler northern island in Japan despite opposition to the plan in the capital, the president of Tokyo 2020 Olympics said on Thursday.

The International Olympic Committee on Wednesday announced a plan to move the marathon and race walking events to Japan’s northern Hokkaido island because of worries about heat in Tokyo next summer.

“If the IOC and the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) support it how can our organising committee tell them no,” Yoshiro Mori told reporters. “We have to accept this. It’s not about whether [the plan] is good or bad.”

Mori’s comments come after Japanese government and Tokyo officials earlier said they want to discuss what they have referred to as an IOC proposal at a coordination commission meeting planned at the end of this month.

Kyodo News reported Japanese officials describing the move as coming “out of the blue”.

“There are still lots of issues to discuss, lots of detailed things we have to work on,” Mori said. The IOC plan “puts those who have been working with us on ways to tackle high temperatures in a difficult spot,” he added.

The Tokyo 2020 organiser had been trying to find ways to keep athletes and spectators cool during hot weather and at a test marathon event in September, deployed tents equipped with mist machines. Sapporo, Hokkaido’s capital, is as much as five to six degrees centigrade cooler than Tokyo in summer where temperatures commonly exceed 30 degrees.

The last time Tokyo hosted the Olympic games the event opened in October when temperatures are lower.

Last summer, nearly 93,000 people sought emergency care for heatstroke across Japan, with 159 dying.

Temperature issues have quickly become the major headache for 2020 organisers, who have otherwise won praise for their preparations.

Organisers had already brought forward the start time for several events including the marathon and rolled out a variety of anti-heat measures including artificial snow.

However, recent test events did little to cool fears, with a French triathlete treated for heatstroke and several spectators taken ill at a rowing trial.

TALE OF TWO CITIES

Sapporo officials, meanwhile, were thrilled with the IOC proposal. That was not the case in Tokyo, where the reaction to the move seemed to catch city and organizing committee officials by surprise.

“We take this as an honour,” Sapporo Mayor Katsuhiro Akimoto said.

Sapporo, which hosted the 1972 Winter Olympics, has expressed interest in bidding for the 2030 Winter Games, and this could be a first step.

“I was very surprised that the IOC specifically mentioned Sapporo but at the same time I feel honoured,” Sapporo mayor Katsuhiro Akimoto told reporters on Thursday.

Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike was not overjoyed on Thursday.

“We are very surprised to learn of this sudden change of direction,” she said, noting the effort that municipal governments had made to organise the race. “We know for a fact that many local [Tokyo] residents are very excited and making preparations for it. I wish to discuss what is the best from [all standpoints].”

Koike, however, sided with the IOC’s reasoning that of athlete safety and avoiding Tokyo’s blistering summer heat.

“Of course, the athletes-first approach is extremely important,” she said.

Local media quoted Koike suggesting the IOC might consider moving events to a string of northern islands that Japan contests with Russia, in an apparent dig at the decision.

“For Tokyo 2020, it came as a bit of surprise and I understand that,” John Coates, chairman of the IOC’s Coordination Comm­ission, told Japan’s Kyodo News in an interview in Doha.

“But the problem is that you can’t leave this up in the air,” he said. “We had to move quickly and we didn’t want speculation, we didn’t want rumour and it was better to come out and say what our plan is. We want the athletes to have every opportunity to perform at their best.

We now know that that’s not possible in that heat [in Tokyo].”

Published in Dawn, October 18th, 2019