Buenos Aires, 9th September – In congratulating the Tokyo delegation for winning the bid to host the 2020 Olympic Games on behalf of the European Olympic Committees, EOC President Patrick Hickey, who is also an IOC Member and ANOC Senior Vice-President, added that with two cities from Europe in the running for 2020 he had to be neutral and couldn’t endorse either Istanbul or Madrid before the vote.
After years of immensely hard labour and a great deal of work on communication by the three candidate cities, in the end the IOC has awarded the XXXII Olympiad in 2020 to Tokyo over fellow Candidate Cities Istanbul and Madrid, after two rounds of voting during the 125th IOC Session in Buenos Aires.
Tokyo , which also bid for the 2016 Olympic Games and hosted the 1964Games, received 60 votes to Istanbul’s 36 in the final round, with Madrid having been eliminated in the first round after losing a tie-break with Istanbul.
“Congratulations to the city of Tokyo on its election as host of the 2020 Olympic Games,” said IOC President Jacques Rogge, whose 12-year term in office comes to an end on 10 September. “Tokyo presented a very strong technical bid from the outset and it needed to in competition with two such high-calibre bids from Istanbul and Madrid. All three cities were capable of staging excellent Games in 2020, but in the end it was Tokyo’s bid that resonated the most with the IOC membership, inviting us to ‘discover tomorrow’ by delivering a well-organised and safe Games that will reinforce the Olympic values while demonstrating the benefits of sport to a new generation.”
In Europe, Tokyo’s victory has raised hopes at a number of NOCs who are considering a candidature for the 2024 Games, and so bids should not be long in coming.