Paris Olympics 2024: Japan still wrestles with legacy of its own troubled 2020 Tokyo Games in warning to upcoming hosts
- Cost overruns, corruption and Covid tarnished the Japanese public’s memory of their Games, which were held in 2021
- Many argued they should have been cancelled because of the pandemic, with much of their anger directed towards organisers
Japan is still grappling with the fallout of the corruption-stained and pandemic-delayed Tokyo 2020 Olympics, serving as a warning to Paris ahead of the Games this summer in the French capital.
Cost overruns, corruption and Covid all tarnished the Japanese public’s memory of the Tokyo Olympics, which were held largely behind closed doors in 2021, a year later than planned.
Japan consequently dropped the idea of hosting the Winter Olympics in the northern city of Sapporo because of a lack of public support.
Kaori Yamaguchi, who served on the Japanese Olympic Committee’s executive board for 10 years, told AFP that “Japanese people love the Olympics” and had high hopes for the Tokyo Games.
But Yamaguchi, who stepped down from the board just before the Olympics, said the gap between expectations and reality left people “wondering who the event was for”.
“People felt positive watching the athletes compete (mostly on television) but they had a negative impression of the organisation and management of the event,” said Yamaguchi, who won judo bronze at the 1988 Seoul Games.
