2020 Tokyo Olympics: IOC demands earlier stadium opening

Japan asked to complete project six months before mega-event.

TOKYO: The International Olympic Committee (IOC) demanded on Tuesday that Japan complete its new national stadium by January 2020, three months earlier than planned.

“It won’t be easy to shorten the construction schedule,” said Olympics minister Toshiaki Endo after IOC vice-president John Coates pressed Japan to complete the stadium six months before the start of the summer Games.

The commission “have strongly emphasised we need to have the [stadium] handover to the organising committee by January 2020”, he told reporters after meeting Endo and Tokyo 2020 chief Yoshiro Mori.

Tokyo is due to host the opening ceremony on July 24 that year. But Endo said he cannot guarantee Japan can meet the deadline.

Tokyo sees the stadium’s scheduled completion in April 2020 as already “on a very tight schedule,” he said.

“It is difficult in Japan to secure the materials, workers and engineers,” said the minister.

Normally Olympic venues, particularly ones of this importance, are handed over at least six months before the start of the Games.

The Japanese government last month cancelled a stadium design by Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid because the cost had risen above $2 billion.

It will launch a new tender and hopes to have a revised design before the end of 2015.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 26^th, 2015.

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