Inspectors from the International Olympic Committee Sunday ended their tour of Tokyo, saying they were impressed by the city's "highly professional" bid to host the 2016 Games. "We have been most impressed to find what Tokyo could offer the Olympic Games," said Nawal El Moutawakel, chairwoman of the IOC evaluation commission, at the end of a four-day inspection tour.
At a news conference, she thanked the Tokyo bid committee "for the excellent and highly professional preparation, co-operation, hard work and hospitality. "We are very impressed by the vision, the high quality of presentation and the concept that was presented to us," she said, but added the IOC team would need further, "in-depth studies" of bids by Tokyo and the three other candidates.
The IOC commission has already visited Chicago and will tour Rio de Janeiro and Madrid in the coming weeks. It will draw up a report a month before around 100 IOC members choose the 2016 host, on October 2. Tokyo is the only one of the candidates to have hosted the Summer Games - in 1964 - an event which helped it become an economic superpower. Around 70 percent of the venues will be within a 10-minute ride of the athletes' village.