Tokyo’s bid for the 2016 Summer Olympic Games began its first promotional event of the year by sponsoring an Olympic swim in the freezing waters of Tokyo Bay, a proposed venue for the 2016 Triathlon.
More than forty athletes from Japan’s national wrestling team, including Olympians and Olympic medallists, gathered in front of hundreds of the national media and dove into the sea to demonstrate their “challenging spirit and strong will for success in the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games”.
Dr. Ichiro Kono, CEO and chairman of Tokyo 2016 said, “this is the perfect beginning for Tokyo 2016, starting the year with a significant event, supporting Japanese Olympic athletes who are preparing for the forthcoming Games in Beijing. We feel that our bid must show the same challenging spirit if we are to win our race to host the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Tokyo in 2016. We are also using this opportunity to describe how the bid activity itself is heralding the arrival of a new sporting, social, economic and environmental golden era for the benefit of Tokyo, Japan and the whole Olympic Movement”.
The event was sponsored by the bid committee and hosted by the Japan Wrestling Federation and is part of a five-day New Year’s training session for the Japan national wrestling team held every Olympic year. This year it took place for the first time at Odaiba, the proposed venue for triathlon.
Tokyo 2016 said it is putting the finishing touches to its International Olympic Committee (IOC) questionnaire for submission to the IOC by January 14.
