The head of Japanese athletics broke down in tears on Friday as she promised that hosting the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo would help erase the negative memories of the “Covid Olympics” in 2021. Yuko Arimori also insisted that the biggest sporting event in Japan since the pandemic, with more than 2,000 athletes competing over nine days of competition, would help re-energise the Japanese nation.
“This was supposed to be the venue of the Tokyo Olympic Games,” she said. “Sport is not just for athletes, it is for everyone to get together, to be energised, to enjoy. So it is really meaningful to have this championship here in Tokyo as we would like to eliminate that part of the memory and revive the memory of authentic sport.
“And everyone that will come here will realise that athletics is the mother of sports and it is something to ignite and energise people. This is the message that will be disseminated from these world championships.”
Her message was reinforced by the head of the event, Mitsugi Ogata, who said the championships would show the power of sport. “Tokyo 2020 left us with all sorts of positive and negative legacies,” he said. “We want to erase all that negative stuff we experienced in 2021 and we want to show this is what a championship should look like.”
The World Athletics president, Sebastian Coe, said he was delighted to return, having been the first sports leader to come to Japan during the pandemic in 2020. “We will have full stadia and noisy, passionate and knowledgable fans,” said Lord Coe. “We’ve sold 500,000 tickets – that will be 50,000 a night – with many sessions sold out. This is the largest global sporting event of the year by some distance. A billion viewers will be watching over 2,000 athletes in 200 countries. You can expect an athletics display for the ages.”
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Coe also defended the decision to hold the world championships at the end of the season rather than in its traditional mid-August slot. “I think fans were confused about a season that sort of seemed to have its crescendo in a world championship or an Olympic Games and then we were in Zurich or Brussels, or wherever it happened to be a couple of days later,” he said. “I think there is now a pace and a rhythm to the season.”
