Features

Unique One Race event to open Tokyo’s National Stadium

Tokyo’s new National Stadium will be inaugurated on December 21 with a celebratory ‘One Race’ event, the Japan Sport Council has announced.

The event will be attended by Usain Bolt and a number of other athletes, including Japan’s Anna Doi, Aska Cambridge, Yoshihide Kiryu, Chisato Fukushima, Shota Lizuka, Shuhei Tada, Yuki Koike and Kana Ichikawa.

Paralympic stars, including Great Britain’s Hannah Cockroft and Jonnie Peacock, will also feature at the unique event, which will seek to break down barriers relating to body, age, gender, nationality, religion and language.

The event will see Japan compete against a dream team representing the rest of the world. As a trial, the event will be synchronised with events being held in overseas stadia and connected in real time.

The Japan Sport Council worked with the Japan Athletics Federation and the Japan Para Athletics Federation to organise the event, which will form part of wider celebrations to open the 60,000-seat stadium.

The National Stadium will serve as the centrepiece of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games, hosting the opening and closing ceremonies and track and field events. The capacity of the stadium, which features an innovative wooden roof structure built using material from each of Japan’s 47 prefectures, will be expanded to 68,000 after the Games.

Next year’s Olympics are scheduled to run from July 24 to August 9, with the Paralympics to follow from August 25 to September 6.

Image: Tokyo 2020