Tokyo world athletics party can make up for Olympic lock-out, says CEO

Tokyo, 7 Feb  - Full crowds in Tokyo for this year's World
Athletics Championships can make up for fans being locked out of the city's
pandemic-postponed Olympics in 2021, the event's CEO told AFP.

The Tokyo Games took place a year later than planned and behind closed doors
in a bid to halt Covid infections, creating an eerie atmosphere in venues and
forcing fans to watch the action at home on TV.

There will be no such restrictions when the Japanese capital hosts the World
Athletics Championships in September at the National Stadium, which seats
over 65,000 and was the main venue for the Olympics.

Organising committee head Takashi Takeichi said fans and athletes were happy
to get a second chance after the Olympic disappointment.

"There is something great about watching it live and it's still sad to this
day that there was zero chance of people doing that," he said.

"Athletes have also told me that they felt uncomfortable and lonely competing
in front of empty stands.

"Especially for the Japanese athletes, they are looking forward to having
another chance to compete in Tokyo and give their best performance in a full
stadium."

Tokyo Olympics organisers decided to ban fans from most venues just weeks
before the Games began, with Japan under a virus state of emergency.

It meant a subdued atmosphere that athletes described as "hard" and said they
were unable to feed off the energy of the crowd.

- 'Together in celebration' -

Takeichi hopes the world championships will be more like last year's Paris
Olympics, where he said "the fans were all together in celebration".

"I'd like to see the whole stadium cheer together when they see a good
performance, or for them all to fall silent in that moment just before a race
starts," he said.

"I want everyone to be excited about going to the stadium."

Tickets went on general sale at the end of January and Takeichi is confident
that all nine days of the championships will be sold out.

He also hopes the competition can rekindle the Japanese public's enthusiasm
for hosting international sporting events, after corruption scandals surfaced
in the wake of the Tokyo Olympics.

"Whether we do it properly or not will be the touchstone for whether Tokyo
can host big sporting events in the future," he said.

"If we fail again then people won't forgive it.

"If we do it in a way that people in Tokyo and Japan can accept, I think it
will have a future."bss