No.82 Announcement of the Course for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Road Cycling Race!

The host city for the summer Olympics in 2020 was decided to be Tokyo at the IOC General Assembly in September 2013, and preparations began in earnest after the Tokyo Organizing Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games was established in January 2014.
For this Olympics, the concept of a "compact event" was proposed, with plans to concentrate the competition venues in the city center. Therefore, I thought it would be difficult for Inagi City to be a venue since only a few events would be held in the Tama area, but I was greatly looking forward to it when I learned that the cycling road race course was included in the bid file.
By the way, various issues arose during the early stages of preparation for this event. The construction plan for the new National Stadium, which was decided to be rebuilt with a design by Zaha Hadid in 2012, was abruptly canceled in July 2015, and the public recruitment process had to be redone. Additionally, the event emblem designed by Kenjiro Sano was subject to a lawsuit for being too similar to the logo of the Liège Theatre in Belgium, leading to its discontinuation.
Alongside resolving these troubles, there were also movements to reconsider various competition venues due to reasons such as reducing construction costs, which caused some anxiety. The cycling road race had a course set to pass through Inagi City at the time of the bid submission in 2013, and in December 2015, the IOC Board approved a course starting and finishing at the Imperial Palace East Garden, circling around Inagi City and Tama City, marking the stage for specific course selection. However, just then, information came in about changing the finish point to Musashino no Mori. Since it would be problematic if there were significant changes from here on, I submitted a request for the course to be routed through Inagi City to Governor Yoichi Masuzoe and Chairman Yoshiro Mori of the organizing committee in May 2016, and in June of the same year, an Opinion Statement was submitted from the Inagi City Council to the Governor and the Chairman of the organizing committee.
However, after that, with no progress on the course setting, I was very surprised when a newspaper reported last May that the proposal to start at Musashino no Mori and finish at Fuji Speedway was gaining traction.

With Mount Fuji in the background, the charm of Japan is conveyed, and it has been requested by the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) to change the course to one that has more undulations, making it easier to show the differences in the athletes' abilities. There is a sense of crisis that Inagi City may be excluded if we continue to stand by, so we decided to collaborate with Tama City from this point on to engage in solicitation and request activities.
In June 2017, both the Inagi City Council and the Tama City Council passed Opinion Statements and requests regarding the solicitation, and a request was also submitted by the Mayor of Tama City.
Furthermore, in October 2017, the Mayor of Inagi City and I jointly submitted a proposal to Governor Yuriko Koike to highlight the points that both cities are suitable for bicycle road racing.
Since then, several newspapers have published speculative articles regarding the course change, but we, as local governments, have no decision-making power, so we could only wait for the results of our previous request actions. Finally, on August 9, 2018, an official decision and announcement was made by the organizing committee, and it was confirmed that Inagi City would be part of the course.
I would like to express my gratitude once again to all those who have cooperated in the solicitation efforts. Let us work together to prepare for the day of the event.