Osaka chosen as Japan's candidate for 2008 Olympics

Osaka chosen as Japan's candidate for 2008 Olympics

TOKYO (Kyodo): The western Japanese city of Osaka, proposing a compact-sized Olympics which "puts athletes first," was chosen yesterday as the nation's candidate to host the 2008 Summer Games.

Osaka beat lone rival Yokohama 29 votes to 17 in a secret ballot held in Tokyo by a 49-member selection committee made up of Japanese Olympic Committee (JOC) executives and representatives of the various national sports governing bodies.

Three ballots were declared invalid.

Despite its relative lack of experience in hosting sporting events, Osaka's idea to have 70 percent of the sports within the city appeared to win much support.

Another main feature of Osaka's bid is what it calls a "Sports Paradise" -- a pair of man-made islands in Osaka Bay in which a new 100,000-seat Olympic Stadium, indoor swimming pool and an athletes village would be located, all within walking distance of each other.

Osaka proposes to host the sports extravaganza from July 26 to Aug. 10 at a cost of 169.5 billion yen (US$1.46 billion).

Yokohama, just South of Tokya and Japan's second largest city in population terms, put its budget at around the same figure but, in sharp contrast, proposed using mostly existing facilities over a vast region covering eight prefectures in the Tokyo metropolitan area.

Before and after yesterday's decision, committee members expressed concern that transportation from venue to venue would be a serious problem.

A senior JOC member, Katsuma Takahashi, said "if you consider the Olympic Charter, Yokohama's wide-region plan was against the rules".

Yokohama also wanted to host the games in mid-October because of the fine weather in the autumn, as well as staging the Paralympic Games before the Olympics -- both of which were considered unusual aspects of their bid.

Osaka's head-start in the race appeared to be another major factor for its victory.

Takahashi said that when Osaka officials began making their bid four years ago, they were thinking of hosting the event with neighboring prefectures with visions of using the Olympics to boost the local economy.

"But we told them that idea doesn't work and so they changed. And now they have developed a plan which is incomparable to the one offered by Yokohama," Takahashi said.

The race for the 2008 Olympic Games is expected to match the extreme intensity of the one currently going on for the 2004 Games, which drew a record 11 candidate cities.

Cairo, London, Madrid, Moscow, Paris and Prague say they hope to be the host in 2008, in addition to Pusan, South Korea and a city in Thailand yet to be named.

Intense

Osaka Mayor Takafumi Isomura acknowledged the competition would be intense and said his city was prepared to bid more than once if necessary.

"Just like the Japanese students hoping to pass their university entrance exams on their first try, we hope to do the same with our Olympic bid," Isomura said. "But if that doesn't happen, we won't give up. We will even try two or three times, until the Games come to Osaka."

Located 400 kilometers southwest of Tokyo, Osaka is the commercial hub of western Japan and its population of 2.6 million is third largest in the nation. It will host the 2001 East Asian Games.

International Olympic Committee (IOC) rules limit bids to host the Olympic Games to one city per country. The IOC is slated to choose the host of the 2008 Olympics in 2001.

Japan has hosted the Olympics twice in the past -- the 1964 Summer Games in Tokyo and the 1972 Winter Games in Sapporo.

The central Japan city of Nagano will host next February's Winter Games.