Congratulations to Tokyo for winning the 2020 Olympic Games hosting rights.
Tokyo beat Istanbul and Madrid for the honour and one has to feel for Madrid, for whom this was their third unsuccessful attempt to host an Olympic Games. Had Istanbul won the hosting rights they would have become the first host city to straddle two continents, but unfortunately it was not to be for the Turks.
Interestingly Tokyo in 1964 was the last Olympic Games to be untainted by drugs, politics or any other type of scandal. It is probably too much to expect the same in 2020, but we can live in hope.
Tokyo’s victory was interestingly a victory too for Great Britain as not only was Tokyo’s new Olympic Stadium designed by Zaha Hadid, who was responsible for designing London 2012’s Aquatics Centre, but its stirring, vote-swaying final presentation was written by Nick Varley.
This last fact meant it was a hat-trick of triumphs for the founder of Olympic bid campaign agency Seven46. They also penned the presentations for London 2012 and Rio 2016. Ironically Rio defeated Tokyo four years ago, when the Japanese bid was criticised for being to be too sober. Having employed the same script writer as Rio this time around they managed to push all the right emotional buttons.
Tokyo here we come in 2020.
