The organising committee for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games has proposed reducing the capacity of some venues by more than 30,000, according to Japanese news agency Kyodo.
Games organisers met with the International Olympic Committee earlier this week and Kyodo said the move is designed to reduce costs. A lack of space at venues for events such as boxing, equestrian and other sports is also said to be a factor.
Tokyo’s National Stadium is among 12 venues under consideration for capacity reduction.
Kyodo added that the capacity of the equestrian venue would drop from 14,000 to 9,300, the boxing venue from 10,000 to 7,700 and the archery venue from 7,000 to 5,000. Further reductions are planned for the handball and cycling venues.
In an interview with Kyodo News, IOC vice-president John Coates said: “We’ve seen the athletics stadium get down from 120,000 in Sydney to 65,000 in London and 68,000 here. Most of these reductions will be in the temporary seating anyway, but we don’t want to provide more seating than we need.
“I think they’ll find the billion dollars by the time we get to the end of the Games, but they’re not going to say, here’s a billion dollars now. It’ll just sit there in a contingency. There is a discipline.”
Image: Andrew Mager
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