Fukuoka Joins the Olympic Bid Process
April 29, 2006 by admin
Filed under Sports Rumors
The Japanese port of Fukuoka formally announced on Tuesday its bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics. The southern provincial city believes the era of big cities hosting the Games is over, but faces competition from the capital Toyko to go forward as Japanese bid.
“We regard the (2012) London Games as the last of the 20th-century-style Olympics,” world-renowned Japanese architect Arata Isozaki, executive producer of the Fukuoka bid, said. “After the 1936 ‘Nazi Games’, nearly 90 percent of the (Summer) Olympics have been held in capitals or big cities of similar size and used to boost the prestige of the host countries,” Isozaki said. “This trend deviates from the true principle of the Olympics.”
The Japanese Olympic Committee (JOC) will choose between Fukuoka and the Tokyo on August 30 as Japan’s sole candidate for the 2016 venue, which won’t be decided by the International Olympic Committee until mid-2009. Other potential bid cities include Madrid and New York, both of which lost 2012 bids. New York will face challenges from Los Angeles, which reaped huge profits by hosting the 1994 Games, and other US cities. Other potential candidates include Rio De Janeiro and Asian cities Busan in South Korea, Bangkok and New Delhi.
Fukuoka has already hosted such world-class sporting events as the 1995 Student Games, the 2001 World Swimming Championships as well as the recent World Cross Country championships. The city plans to invest some 480 billion yen ($4.2 billion) in Olympic-related infrastructure — 97 billion yen each from its own coffers and the state government as well as 270 billion yen from the private sector.
Both Fukuoka and Tokyo, which staged Asia’s first Olympics in 1964, have promised to place most of their Olympic facilities within a radius of 10 kilometers with such “compactness” being an Olympic trend.
Well, the city from US bidding for 2016 is Chicago, and not New York or Los Angeles. I don’t know why this information is wrongly given here. Is it intentional or just ignorance or misinformation? Don’t know…
The main argument in vogue for the decision to be taken by the Olympic committee is the fair rotation of host cities throughout the world. If more than one city has the minimum qualifications to receive the games, the policies created in the spirit of the games are that those regions which have never hosted the Olympics should be given priority. South America and Africa have never hosted the games, whereas amongst the present bidding countries, Japan and Spain have already made it once, and US’ cities 4 times. The games have been concentrated always in the most wealthy countries countries and in certain areas of the world, despite many other cities having capacity to receive the games, but which were not yet given the opportunity to prove their worth.
Right now the XV Pan American Games are being succesfully hosted in Rio de Janeiro with the greatest number of athletes and countries ever participating in the games, but there is a strange “silence” in the mainstream “G8 media” regarding the event. To keep the spirit of the Olympic Games alive, it is essential that opportunities are given for neglected regions of the world to show their capacity to receive the world citizens in such an important event. Technology and resources are surely available and experience in global conventions also are abundant and highly qualified in the South hemisphere (where only Australia hosted the games so far). With the 2016 Olympic Games happening in a city like Rio de Janeiro, which has so much to offer and at the same time so much in need of development projects to help overcome well known social challenges in Brazil and South America, the whole world will be able to gain in social justice and equality, for it will encourage a more balanced and decentralized development of the global economy. The 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro — a city which despite the silence (intentional and planned?) of the media regarding the Pan is proving to have all conditions to realize such an event very well — can be one good step in addressing unbalance issues in some of the global crises striking the world today.
It would be a challenge, but the spirit of the Olympic sports thrives on challenges, isn’t it?
Nor did LA host the ‘94 Games… It was ‘84.
Here is an update for anyone who pops into this page – 12/20/07.
Tokyo beat out Fukuoka in the race for the honor to bid internationally back in Fall 2006. The Tokyo bid is being run by the government and they seem to be doing a great job at getting the word around. According to a recent pole, about 62% of Japanese support Tokyo’s bid efforts and hope to see the Games in 2016.
As for Chicago’s Bid – they managed to stage a great World Boxing Championship in October 2007. This event was a Olympic Qualifier event and hundreds of amateur athletes from around the globe poured in to give it their best shot. Japan happened to qualify one athlete, Masatsugu Kawachii, seeing him win the first medal for Japan in a REALLY long time. He’s a pretty cool guy as I got to know him during the opening ceremony and throughout the event. What a great event – this definitely gives Chicago a good edge in the eyes of the IOC…