Tokyo welcomes the Olympic Games for the second time
Tokyo is the first Asian city to host the Olympic Games twice. The 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games went down in history as the first Olympic Games to be held in Asia. Although more than 50 years have passed, the legacy of these Games still resonates across the Land of the Rising Sun and thus had significant influence when preparing for the 2020 Olympics.
The second time Tokyo was announced the host of the Summer Olympics was on 7 September 2013, during the IOC session in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Before the official vote was cast, countries made their presentations: the Japanese, Turkish and Spanish prime ministers, princes and princesses as well as sport stars urged the IOC to vote for Tokyo, Istanbul or Madrid, yet in the end Tokyo emerged victorious. During the first round, Tokyo received 42 votes, while both Madrid and Istanbul got 26 votes each. In the second round between Madrid and Istanbul, the Turkish city surpassed the Spanish capital by 4 votes, resulting in 49:45. In the final round, Tokyo won against Istanbul 60:36.
206 teams of the National Olympic Committees will participate in the 2020 Olympics, represented by 11,091 athletes. The Games will feature 339 events in 33 different sports, encompassing a total of 50 disciplines – 165 events for men, 156 for women and 18 mixed or open events. Tokyo anticipates to gather approximately 70,000 volunteers.
The Tokyo 2020 Organising Committee was allowed to propose an addition of new sports to the Olympic Programme. All five of them – baseball/softball, karate, skateboarding, sport climbing and surfing – were approved and added to the Olympic Programme during the IOC session in Buenos Aires. Traditional sports programmes were also supplemented by new competitions, e.g. 3x3 basketball.
The organisers of the Tokyo Olympics pay significant attention to both sports and social aspects of the world’s largest sporting event. One of the most important social projects is to revive and rebuild the destroyed city of Fukushima. In order to show the world how Tōhoku region (Fukushima, Miyagi and Iwate prefectures) is recovering from the disaster and to thank people worldwide for contributing to its restoration, it will host football, baseball and softball events.
Lithuanian Olympic coins
Coins previously issued by the Bank of Lithuania to commemorate other Olympic Games were twice prophetic in predicting victories of the Lithuanian athletes. Medals were won in exactly those sports that were featured on the coins: Lithuania’s national basketball team received bronze medals at the Atlanta Olympics (1996), while Virgilijus Alekna won a gold medal at the Sydney Olympics (2000).
The new commemorative coin dedicated to the XXXII Olympic Games in Tokyo features four rowers. This is the discipline where Lithuania’s representatives were awarded two medals in Rio de Janeiro (2016) – Saulius Ritter and Mindaugas Griškonis won silver in men’s double sculls, whereas in women’s – Milda Valčiukaitė and Donata Vištartaitė scored bronze. At the Sydney Olympics (2000), bronze medals in women’s double sculls were awarded to Birutė Šakickienė and Kristina Poplavskaja.
Bronislovas Čekanauskas
