Outlook
Tokyo's bid was promoted to the Candidate City shortlist in June 2008. Despite Tokyo's many strengths, the Beijing Games will have been held in the region eight years before, as well as Tokyo's own previous hosting in 1964. However, on numerous occasions the Olympics have been held eight years apart on the same continent.
From 72% in March 2008, Tokyo local support fell to 56% in May 2009, the lowest support among the candidate cities. However, other polls conducted in early 2009 by some of the largest local publishers showed more than 70% support of the plan. Tokyo had worked hard to increase the popularity of its bid, even promoting the games on the Tokyo Tower and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building by displaying "Tokyo" and "2016" in the Olympic colors.
In the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly and the Diet of Japan, several left-wing and progressive parties opposed the bid; the Japan Communist Party (JCP), the Tokyo Seikatsusha Network (TSN) and the Social Democratic Party (SDPJ) The JCP explained that because of the games, many highway lines, especially the Tokyo Gaikan Expressway will be constructed with huge costs, more than is allocated to other policies: welfare, labor, education and so on. The new government led by the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) have been more cautious than the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) under the leadership of the governor, Shintarō Ishihara; Ishihara was the advocate for the bid in 2006. However, the DPJ voted for the resolutions which support this bid, both in the Diet and the Assembly, and their new Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama attended the meeting in Copenhagen.
Many former Olympic athletes lent their support on the Tokyo bid committee website, including Kōsuke Kitajima (gold medalist for the men's 100m and 200m breaststroke at both the Athens 2004 and Beijing 2008 games). Three other athletes have also expressed their support: Koji Murofushi, the winner of the men's hammer throw in Athens 2004, Mara Yamauchi, a British long distance track and field woman athlete, and Mayumi Narita who holds 15 gold medals in three Paralympics with the women's swimming. In the PR video, French-Japanese TV announcer Christel Takigawa introduces the charm of Tokyo in French, and Riyo Mori, the Miss Universe 2007 winner, spoke in English. Naoko Takahashi, the champion in Sydney 2000 and the former world record holder in the women's marathon, is the project reader of a roughly 10,000 km virtual ekiden (long distance relay) from Tokyo to Copenhagen, the venue of the IOC meeting to determine the host city on October 2, 2009. The Tokyo Marathon is one of the main publicity events for this bid.
Read more about this topic: Tokyo Bid For The 2016 Summer Olympics
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