Athletics – Tokios Nation Stadium: Finally the world is a guest

When the high jumper torn the rod, it was clear how she fell on the blue mat, at the same time the falling rod. Their swears echoed through the stadium with its empty ranks for seconds. Apart from the television cameras, everything was based on an amateur sports event, for which no one was really interested in addition to the active and a few officials. Only the best in the world were present here, in the newly initiated Tokyo Nation Stadium.

The ghost atmosphere of those days burned into memory. It has been four years ago that Tokyo hosted the Summer Olympics. At the beginning of 2020, the then “new Coronavirus” circulated worldwide, so that the world sports festival planned for 2020 was postponed by one year. Because the pandemic was not under control in 2021 afterwards, “Tokyo 2020” ultimately took place before empty ranks.

But now the Japanese capital has a new opportunity to convince the sports world as a solemn host. When the World Athletics Championship in Tokyo runs for nine days from Saturday, 2000 athletes from a good 200 countries and regions will fight for medals. This grand finale of the athletics season also marks a kind of rescheduled Olympic Party for the vole. Especially for the stadium.

Already on Sunday evening local time the women are running for gold over 100 meters, Olympic champion Julien Alfred will compete with world champion Sha’carri Richardson. The men’s final with Olympic champion Noah Lyles follows immediately afterwards. Another top event will be the appearance of pole jumper Armand Duplantis on Monday, who was one of the biggest stars at the summer games of Paris 2024. All of this is likely to ensure loud cheers in Tokyo this time, with finally full house.

The oval, which is over 60,000 people, which was designed by the Japanese star architect Kengo Kuma with many wooden elements in the stairwell and roof and is decorated with plant pots on the facade, blends harmoniously into the Meiji-Park, which actually serves a admission area. Before this stadium was built for the Tokyo Games planned in 2020 for the equivalent of more than one billion euros, the Olympic Stadium of the summer games in 1964 was in the same place.

The expensive new building has been criticized as a waste.

The expensive new building has been criticized as a waste because many viewed it as a waste of public funds. For comparison: As a supporter of FC St. Pauli this year, a cooperative founded the club with the acquisition of the majority of the almost 30,000 spectator financially, was sufficient for the project.

To make matters worse, the nation stadium was initially hardly used after the games in 2021. The public sector was forced to subsidize the stadium with up to two billion yen (eleven million euros) annually. Even after a consortium that includes the ex-telecommunications monopolists NTT and the football league J-League, which has taken over in May this year, the stadium is subsidized.

The appetite of the Japanese society on the design of large sporting events has decreased significantly since »Tokyo 2020«. The Olympic organizers initially claimed that the event would be a huge international party that would not cost taxpayers. In the end there was an event that only took place in the Corona emergency for the paying sponsors, which did not let visitors go to the country and also cost several billion in tax money.

Before the games started, according to surveys, more than 80 percent of people were against the execution of the event. And the beautiful TV pictures, which Tokyo was able to deliver to image production thanks to the IOC monopoly, even reconciled people with the event at short notice. Shortly after the games, it was apparently how official and sponsors had bribed to bring the games to Tokyo. In the middle of public criticism, Sapporo then withdrew from the plan to organize the winter games in 2030.

So can the Athletics World Cup in Tokyo ensure a little reconciliation? Takashi Takeichi from the Tokyo metropolitan government seems to be aware of the challenge. He said to the AFP news agency: “If we deliver an impeccable World Cup, we can prove that Tokyo is a top destination for world sports.” Although Takeichi admitted: “If we fail to move the public, it will be all the more difficult to regain trust.”

A lot is done for that. During the World Cup, a lot is made up for what fell into the water around “Tokyo 2020”, for example the “Host City” program, which cities in the region in the region region accommodate and support national athletes. This is what the Gifu Canada prefecture welcomes. A group of students rehearsed the Canadian national anthem for a reception of this weekend.

It is one of several attempts to connect the Japanese offspring to the wide world, which should cause enthusiasm four years ago, at the ghost games of Tokyo.