Carlos Ghosn: Good Omen for Tokyo 2020?

(ATR) Six months ahead of the Rio 2016 Olympics, shootouts with gangs, a crumbling economy and a government in collapse dominated the headlines. Fast forward to six months from the 2020 Games, where things in Tokyo are far different.

Seven years ago, when it was bidding for the 2020 Olympic Games, Tokyo used the catchphrase "safe pair of hands" to deliver its promise.

Those promises appear to be kept.

Venues are largely finished. Budget cuts through the years leading up to the Games have staved off the need for last-minute chopping. Organizers appear to be working well with NOCs and international federations.

Even the unexpected change just months ago that moved the marathon and race walking venue from Tokyo to Sapporo in northern Japan is being handled gracefully, despite the clumsy way the IOC forced Tokyo to make the move.

That switch, decided suddenly in September, is just one of a number of measures that will be taken across the entire Tokyo Olympics to protect spectators and athletes from the oppressive Tokyo heat. A safe pair of hands.

The government also appears to be rock solid at both the city and national level. Tokyo Metropolitan Governor Yuriko Koike has been the crusader on behalf of Tokyo taxpayers to hold the line on spending. The prudence means there won’t be a repeat of the scramble in Rio to pay for the Paralympics.

Shinzo Abe, the longest-serving prime minister in Japanese history, has held the post from the start of Tokyo’s Olympic bid in 2012. Abe has been an enthusiastic backer of the Olympic project. He has employed the Games as an inspiration for maintaining the recovery of the region in eastern Japan hit by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

At this point four years ago in Rio de Janeiro, the national government was in shambles. Hobbled by a crumbling economy, crime and scandal, Prime Minister DilmaRousseff was on her way to impeachment. Her trial took place during the Olympics that August. There is no telling how much that political strife cut into the Brazilian government’s ability to help deliver the Games.

Two years ahead of the Games, the IOC had so little confidence in Rio’s ability to deliver the first Olympics in South America that it dispatched Gilbert Felli, its former executive director of the Olympic Games, as a permanent on-site monitor.

In Tokyo there’s been no such need. Coordination Commission chair John Coates has flown between home in Australia and Japan dozens of times, the process transforming him intothe face of the IOC for Tokyo.

Worries about the Zika virus was another cloud on the horizon in Rio. The disease, which leads to birth defects, was endemic to Brazil. Fears mounted about the impact the outbreak might have on the Games. In the end there appears to have been little effect.

In 2020, the outbreak of the coronavirus in China may be the epidemiological crisis Tokyo 2020 has to confront. Some soccer matches planned in China as Olympic qualifiers have already been moved; more could follow. Like Zika in Brazil, coronavirus is a wild card for the safe pair of hands.

Unlike Rio in 2016, Olympic visitors to Tokyo have little to fear from street crime or gang violence. Six months before the Rio Olympics, gunfire between police and gangs was a regular occurrence, doing little to assure the rest of the world that Rio was a safe place.

Worry not for Tokyo.

I came face to face with Japan's most wanted fugitive at the Rio Olympics, of all places.

He isn’t a savage hit man or a terrorist under watch. In fact, hours after I interviewed him about his company’s sponsorship of the Rio Olympics, Carlos Ghosn ran in the Olympic torch relay. Now he's on the run in Lebanon, perpetrator of a cinematic-worthy escape from Japan and charges he broke the law as chair of Nissan.

Serious business yes.

Not a worry for Tokyo 2020.

Reported by Ed Hula.