You're reading: NPR: Tokyo Olympics organizers aim to ‘simplify’ games

NPR: Tokyo Olympics organizers aim to ‘simplify’ games

By NPR.

Published June 11, 2020 at 7:37 am

Anastasia Fesikova trains in a swimming pool in the town of Obninsk in the Kaluga region, about 100 kilometres (60 miles) from Moscow, on Dec. 3, 2019. Silver medallist at the London Olympics, multiple European and world champion, Anastasia Fesikova hopes to participate next summer in Tokyo in her 4th Olympic Games. In the Obninsk swimming pool, 100 kilometres from Moscow, the 29-year-old swimmer says she does not think about the risk of exclusion from her country. "I'm trying to ignore all this," she says in an AFP interview. She says she wishes "that our destiny, our work, would not be held hostage to political games, because I know how much (athletes) have to work, how much there is at stake - all this is to go to the Olympic Games.

Photo by AFP

The Tokyo Olympic Games, which have been delayed a year to 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic, may be held in a simpler fashion than the Olympics usually are. Yoshiro Mori, the president of the organizing committee, told reporters Wednesday that he hopes to simplify the games in order to cut costs and provide a safer environment, according to Japan’s NHK News.