Obscure Selection of Sports

Tokyo Olympic Organizing Committee announced five sports would be recommended to add to the list of the event in 2020. They were baseball/softball, karate, skateboarding, sports climbing and surfing, all of which are currently popular in young people in Japan. Having been annoyed with scandals over plagiarism of official logo or resignation of Minister in charge of sports, the committee is eager to rebuild nationalistic enthusiasm on the international sports event.

President of International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, has been promoting Olympic reform called Agenda 2020, which included initiative of host country to propose adding new sports in Olympic games. IOC had been concerned on a reality that only a few cities in the world was offering candidacy for hosting Olympic, mainly because of financial reason. There also was a notion that traditional sports games did not attract young people.

TOOC received requests from twenty-six sports organizations to add their sports on the list and selected the eight out of them. After consideration of international popularity or population of players, bowling, squash and martial arts were dropped. Karate or sports climbing survived the selection, even though popularity in the world or basis of scoring was not necessarily established.

Having twenty million players in the world, squash was not chosen for Olympic game. “Why a game with high evaluation of IOC was not chosen?” told the president of Japan Squash Association. While TOOC stressed transparency of selection process, leaders of sports organizations complained. While one of the boarding members leaked information that baseball/softball was hopeful, reasons of picking or dropping each sports were not announced. It is doubted that there was deals between TOOC and IOC in the selection.

Skepticism to the members of TOOC is basic disturbance in preparation for the Olympic. The president of TOOC is former Prime Minister and political mentor of Shinzo Abe, Yoshiro Mori. While he established friendship with Russian President, Vladimir Putin because of judo experience, or has been known as a player of rugby football, Mori is not an advanced player in national level in both sports. Secretary General, Toshiro Muro, is former Vice-minister of Ministry of Finance, who had mostly been nothing to do with sports community. Wikipedia introduces his hobby as painting. Member in charge of the selection is Fujio Mitarai, former President of Japan Business Federation, or Keidanren.

It is fair to say that TOOC is an organization led by former leaders from politics, bureaucracy and business sector, topping the social pyramid of Japan. Having experienced scandals stems from collusive relationship among those three, including Lockheed Scandal or Recruit Scandal, Japanese people are fundamentally careful in trusting the leaders.