(Tokyo) The Japanese city of Sapporo will suspend promotion of its bid for the 2030 Winter Olympics and is planning a nationwide poll to gauge public support after a corruption scandal linked to the Summer Games in Tokyo. Tokyo, local officials said.
These measures were unveiled as prosecutors continue to investigate a vast bribery case linked to the Tokyo Olympics, the Games which were finally held in 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“In light of the Tokyo (Olympic Games) case, it has been determined that we need to design a clean Games,” Akifumi Kudo, a local official working on the Sapporo bid, told AFP. northern Japan.
Sapporo was seen as favorite to host a Winter Games for the second time, ahead of rival cities Salt Lake City in the United States and Vancouver in Canada, but the corruption scandal in Tokyo has clouded that bid.
Sapporo Mayor Katsuhiro Akimoto said on Tuesday the city needed time to develop robust anti-corruption measures to gain public support.
“Rather than running towards the goal and closing our eyes to our surroundings, we concluded that our priority should be to dispel public concerns or doubts,” he told reporters.
“We will review and publish our operational plan for the Games, while confirming the will of the public,” he added, insisting that Sapporo was still committed to its bid.
The city hopes to finalize a new plan for the Games in the spring and then conduct a nationwide poll to gauge public support, Kudo said.
At the beginning of December, the governor of Hokkaido, the northern island where Sapporo is located, had warned that the Olympic candidacy had become problematic.
“Given the series of problems with the Tokyo Olympics, it will be difficult to build momentum as it is,” said Naomichi Suzuki.
The corruption scandal linked to Tokyo-2020 has continued to swell in recent months. At the center of the case, a former senior official of the organization of the Summer Olympics, Haruyuki Takahashi, suspected of having accepted bribes to help companies become official sponsors of the event.
The scandal also splattered the company that produced the Games mascots, a chain of business costume stores, a publishing house and an advertising agency.
And former prime minister Yoshiro Mori, who resigned as president of the organization of the Tokyo Olympics after making sexist remarks, said he was ready in September to be questioned by prosecutors.
The International Olympic Committee decided in early December to postpone the selection of the host city for the 2030 Winter Games, which was originally scheduled to be chosen in the fall of 2023, citing concerns about the consequences of climate change.