Athletics | Tokyo's National Stadium: The world is finally here

When the high jumper cleared the bar, she could clearly be heard falling onto the blue mat, along with the falling bar. Her cursing echoed through the empty stadium for several seconds. Aside from the TV cameras, everything here seemed like an amateur sporting event, one in which no one, aside from the athletes and a few officials, was really interested. Yet, here, in the newly inaugurated Tokyo National Stadium, only the world's best were present.

The ghostly atmosphere of those days is seared into our memories . Four years have passed since Tokyo hosted the Summer Olympics. At the beginning of 2020, the then "novel coronavirus" spread worldwide, forcing the world sports festival planned for 2020 to be postponed by a year. Because the pandemic was still not under control in 2021, "Tokyo 2020" ultimately took place in front of empty stands.

But now the Japanese capital has a new opportunity to impress the sports world as a celebratory host. When the World Athletics Championships kick off in Tokyo for nine days starting Saturday, 2,000 athletes from over 200 countries and regions will compete for medals in 49 events. Thus, this grand finale of the athletics season also marks a kind of belated Olympic party for the host city. Especially for the stadium.

The women's 100-meter gold medal will be contested here on Sunday evening local time, with Olympic champion Julien Alfred facing off against world champion Sha'Carri Richardson. The men's final, featuring Olympic champion Noah Lyles, will follow immediately afterward. Another top event on Monday will be the performance of pole vaulter Armand Duplantis, who was one of the biggest stars at the 2024 Paris Summer Games. All of this is likely to generate loud cheers in Tokyo this time, with a full house at last.

The oval, which seats around 60,000 people and was designed by Japanese star architect Kengo Kuma with numerous wooden elements in the stairwell and roof, and adorned with plant pots on the façade, blends harmoniously into Meiji Park, which actually serves as a shrine. Before this stadium was built for the 2020 Tokyo Games at a cost of more than one billion euros, the Olympic Stadium for the 1964 Summer Games stood on the same site.

The expensive new building has been criticized as a waste.

The expensive new building has been criticized as a waste , as many simply viewed it as a waste of public funds. By comparison, when supporters of FC St. Pauli founded a cooperative this year to financially support the club by acquiring a majority stake in the nearly 30,000-seat Millerntor Stadium, just under 30 million euros were sufficient for the project.

To make matters worse, the National Stadium was initially barely used after the 2021 Games. The public sector was forced to subsidize the stadium's maintenance with up to two billion yen (eleven million euros) annually. Even after a consortium including the former telecommunications monopoly NTT and the J-League soccer league took over management in May of this year, the stadium continues to receive subsidies.

Japanese society's appetite for hosting major sporting events has dwindled significantly since Tokyo 2020. The Olympic organizers initially claimed the event would be a huge international party that wouldn't cost taxpayers anything. The end result was an event that, under the coronavirus emergency, took place only for the paying sponsors, denied any visitors to the country, and cost billions in taxpayers' money.

Before the Games began in 2021, according to polls, more than 80 percent of people were against hosting the event. And the beautiful TV images that Tokyo was nevertheless able to deliver thanks to the IOC's monopoly on image production only temporarily reconciled people to the event. Shortly after the Games, it became clear how officials and sponsors had bribed to bring the Games to Tokyo. Amid public criticism, Sapporo then withdrew its plan to host the 2030 Winter Games.

So, can the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo bring some reconciliation? Takashi Takeichi of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government seems aware of the challenge. He told the AFP news agency: "If we deliver a flawless World Championship, we can prove that Tokyo is a top destination for world sport." Takeichi admitted, "If we fail to move the public, it will be even more difficult to regain trust."

A lot is being done to address this. During the World Cup, much of what was canceled around Tokyo 2020 will be made up for, such as the "Host City" program, under which cities in the region host and support national athlete delegations from certain countries. Gifu Prefecture, for example, is welcoming Canada. A group of schoolgirls has rehearsed the Canadian national anthem for a reception this weekend.

It is one of several attempts to connect the Japanese youth with the wider world, which were already intended to generate enthusiasm four years ago at the ghost games in Tokyo.