Aichi Nagoya Asian Games Organizing Committee apologizes for event organization issues

China News Service, Tokyo, September 26 (Reporter Zhu Chenxi) According to the official website of the Aichi Nagoya Asian Games on the 26th, Satoshi Murate, the general director of the organizing committee of this Asian Games, apologized for the recent series of event organization problems.

In order to reduce costs, this Asian Games did not build a dedicated athletes' village. Instead, athletes and participating delegation officials were dispersedly housed in cruise ships, container houses and hotels. The accommodation conditions of some facilities have caused controversy. The transportation services provided by the tournament have also experienced problems many times.

Regarding the logistics support issues of the event, Murate said that some problems did occur during the event, and the reasons were multi-faceted. "But no matter what the reason is, providing these services is the responsibility of the organizing committee, so I want to frankly apologize for these mistakes."

Regarding the cause of the problem, Murate said that one of the reasons was the lack of experience in operating large-scale events among event staff. He said that Japan usually sets up an organizing committee after a certain city decides to host an event, and allocates personnel from local governments to make preparations. However, because the relevant local governments often have no previous experience in hosting large-scale events, in actual work, they “have to start with trial and error and exploration.”

Murate also said that the actual number of participants registered for this event exceeded expectations, which also increased the pressure on accommodation and transportation guarantees. He said that the organizing committee had previously consulted with the Olympic Council of Asia on how to respond to the increase in the number of participants and formulated corresponding rules. "Unfortunately, some of the rules were not followed, which is somewhat beyond our control," Murate said.

The Aichi Nagoya Asian Games Organizing Committee issued a statement on the 22nd to respond to relevant issues, stating that it would carefully listen to the opinions of each delegation and make necessary improvements while implementing the existing accommodation and catering service system to ensure that all delegations can participate with peace of mind.

Regarding this statement, Japan's "Nikkan Sports" website pointed out: "The statement does not mention the problems such as insufficient preparation and human error of the organizing committee that have continued to occur so far, nor does it respond to the questioning of Japan's ability to organize large-scale international events. In addition, front-line volunteers also reported on social media problems such as the chaos of the on-site command system, and the pressure faced by the organizing committee in event organization and management has further emerged."