Tokyo 2020 Urged By FINA To Press On With $650 pool Despite Deep Concern Over Costs

The International Swimming Federation – FINA – continues to be caught in a conflict of mindsets and financial realities, the executive director Cornel Marculescu using the chance of a visit to Tokyo for the limping world cup series to tell Olympic 2020 bosses: don’t abandon plans to build a new aquatics venue – at more than £520m twice the cost of London 2012’s pool – for the Games despite the damage threatened by ballooning costs.

According to the Japan Times, the Romanian cites “legacy” as the reason he would like Tokyo to stick to costly plans to build new facilities for 2020 despite the fact that Japan’s capital already has fine pools available and open to refurbishment for Olympic use.

A Tokyo Metropolitan Government Task Force commissioned by Yuriko Koike, the city’s new governor, proposed last month that venues for swimming, rowing and canoe sprint and volleyball be moved in the face of a likely ¥3 trillion ($30 billion) rise in costs for the 2020 Games over original estimates at the bidding stage.

Those looking at the budget will doubtless have an eye an an ear on what Japanese taxpayers would have to say about an extra 30 billion dollars that might be put …

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