Sawt Falasteen - Tokyo world athletics party can make up for Olympic lock-out, says CEO

The Tokyo Games took place a year later than planned and behind closed doors in a bid to halt Covid infections, creating an eerie atmosphere in venues and forcing fans to watch the action at home on TV.

There will be no such restrictions when the Japanese capital hosts the World Athletics Championships in September at the National Stadium, which seats over 65,000 and was the main venue for the Olympics.

Organising committee head Takashi Takeichi said fans and athletes were happy to get a second chance after the Olympic disappointment.

"There is something great about watching it live and it's still sad to this day that there was zero chance of people doing that," he said.

"Athletes have also told me that they felt uncomfortable and lonely competing in front of empty stands.

"Especially for the Japanese athletes, they are looking forward to having another chance to compete in Tokyo and give their best performance in a full stadium."

Tokyo Olympics organisers decided to ban fans from most venues just weeks before the Games began, with Japan under a virus state of emergency.

It meant a subdued atmosphere that athletes described as "hard" and said they were unable to feed off the energy of the crowd.

- 'Together in celebration' -

Takeichi hopes the world championships will be more like last year's Paris Olympics, where he said "the fans were all together in celebration".

"I'd like to see the whole stadium cheer together when they see a good performance, or for them all to fall silent in that moment just before a race starts," he said.

"I want everyone to be excited about going to the stadium."

Tickets went on general sale at the end of January and Takeichi is confident that all nine days of the championships will be sold out.

He also hopes the competition can rekindle the Japanese public's enthusiasm for hosting international sporting events, after corruption scandals surfaced in the wake of the Tokyo Olympics.

"Whether we do it properly or not will be the touchstone for whether Tokyo can host big sporting events in the future," he said.

"If we fail again then people won't forgive it.

"If we do it in a way that people in Tokyo and Japan can accept, I think it will have a future."

I.Yassin--SF-PST