By Graham Dunbar / The Associated Press
GENEVA—The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is in talks with insurers over being compensated for the postponed Tokyo Games.
An “open discussion” is under way with insurance brokers, the IOC’s Olympic Games operations Director Pierre Ducrey said Thursday. The aim is “to try and find the right level of compensation to help us bear the cost of having to wait another year,” Ducrey said.
The IOC pays for insurance against the cancellation of an Olympics but it has been unclear if its policy covers the one-year postponement forced by the coronavirus pandemic.
Cancellation policies detailed in the IOC’s annual accounts cost $14.4 million for the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics and $12.8 million for the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Games.
The IOC said last month it set aside $650 million to cover its own potential extra costs for the postponement.
Costs for organizers in Japan are expected to reach billions of dollars, with most of the bill paid for by taxpayers.
Ducrey said retaining the Olympic Village for another year was “problem No. 1.”
The complex of more than 5,600 apartments in Tokyo Bay is “a fundamental piece of being able to deliver the games,” Ducrey said during an online conference with sports management students in India.
Around 25 percent of the apartments have been pre-sold to people who will move in after the Olympics are over, and those buyers are set to receive some compensation for having to wait an extra year before taking possession.
“Obviously you have planned your whole life about getting this apartment at that point in time,” Ducrey said. “Now we have to tell all of these owners, ‘Oh, sorry. Your apartment will be delivered to you a year later.’”
“It is a huge change and requires a number of compensations and discussions,” he said.
Public officials in Tokyo and Olympic organizing committee staffers said they expect the games to be “streamlined and simplified” to manage costs, and with fewer fans in venues.
Opposition group NON aux JO2024 à Paris, meanwhile, launched a petition calling on the French government to cancel the 2024 Olympic Games in the French capital.
The group, whose name translates as “No to the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris,” said the current economic and social crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic “deserves more funding than the Olympic Games.”
Concerns over the potential for considerable cost overruns and the financial impact of the possible cancellation of Tokyo 2020, postponed until 2021 due to the Covid-19 virus, are also expressed by NON aux JO2024 à Paris in the petition.
NOlympics LA, a group opposed to Los Angeles staging the 2028 Olympic Games, is among the co-signatories of the petition.
“We cannot make our way toward a new world along the misguided path of the old one,” the petition stated. “We must reject the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. We must invest in health, education, housing and public services.”
“The current economic and social crisis deserves more funding than the Olympic Games. The Olympic Games are a symbol of unchecked globalization, and a threat to the environment and to our heritage,” it added. “Above all, they are an immense waste for the benefit of some [corporate sponsors, real-estate developers, the construction sector…] that we can no longer afford.”
The coronavirus pandemic has led to fresh calls for a referendum on Paris hosting the 2024 Games, while City Council officials also relaunched the debate on the city staging the event.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo said in a recent interview with the L’Équipe newspaper that “these are the same doubts that were expressed at each stage of the case, the same respectable oppositions” and said organizers would have to “integrate the lessons of this health crisis” into the planning of the Games.
Image credits: AP