Hiroshima Withdraw 2020 Olympics Candidacy

The Japanese capital looks set to be the country’s candidate city in their attempts to stage the 2020 Olympic Games after it was announced that it’s sole rival of Hiroshima had scrapped plans to bid for the event due to a lack of funding and public support.

Mayor of Hiroshima Kazumi Matsui confirmed to the Kyodo news agency that he had decided to dissolve the bidding committee following a meeting yesterday, May 22, leaving Tokyo as the sole Japanese city in the running to stage the Games.

The Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — hit by atomic bombs in World War II — had initially expressed an interest in a joint Olympic bid before Nagasaki’s bid faltered and then Hiroshima suffered a major setback when Tadatoshi Akiba, the leading advocate of a bid, announced he would not seek re-election as the Mayor of the city this spring.

National Olympic Committees have until September 1 to submit the names of 2020 bid cities to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara has repeatedly said he hopes his city will bid for the 2020 Olympics.

Tokyo came third in the vote for the 2016 Olympics, behind second-placed Madrid and Rio de Janeiro, which secured the hosting rights. Despite the defeat, Tokyo’s bid was praised for its technical excellence by the IOC in its evaluation report.