Two years to the week that Tokyo won its bid over Istanbul and Madrid to host the 2020 Olympic Games, major stumbles in planning and preparation have caused the shining promise to take a nosedive.
The upward-creeping costs projected for the National Stadium took on the semblance of those news reports about Shinjuku night clubs, where unwary patrons were stuck with outrageous bill-padding — except that rather than hundreds of thousands of yen, stadium cost overruns were in the hundreds of millions.
Political pressures forced Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to step in, and the planners wielded their budgetary axe, trimming ¥100.1 billion from the project by such measures as reducing the stadium's footprint, cutting seating capacity from 72,000 to 68,000 and removing air conditioning from the seating area, although roofing will be retained to keep spectators dry and out of direct sunlight.
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